London's US diplomats gradually going green

LONDON, Apr 26 (Reuters) US President George W Bush may be unconvinced about the human contribution to global warming but his diplomats in Britain are going green with a vengeance to cut both costs and carbon emissions.

Recycling has become a part of daily life at the London embassy, and low energy lightbulbs are everywhere. Now the embassy has put in a hydrogen fuel cell to heat and power the common parts of one of the apartment blocks the embassy owns to house staff in the city -- cutting energy demand by 10 per cent.

''Our hope is to make this the greenest old US embassy in the world,'' deputy chief of mission David Johnson said today at an exhibition to celebrate Earth Day.

The embassy is also about to install a small one kilowatt wind turbine at its warehouse in north London and, during refurbishment of the embassy building in Grosvenor Square over the next decade, it plans water and energy efficiency measures.

It has already made a first step installing 52 waterless urinals, thus saving 1 million litres of water a month.

REUTERS SHB RAI0345