Momentum is growing globally for green solutions to the global financial crisis.

In November China announced a $100 billion dollar plan for increasing energy efficiency, expanding rail networks and other areas of environmental-related action.

Now President Barack Obama has committed the US to double its capacity for renewable energy over the next three years.

More than 3000 miles of transmission lines are to be built to transmit this energy.

Mr Obama is moving forward with regulations to improve vehicle fuel efficiency. He is also looking at ways in which individual states can set their own car emission standards, to provide the freedom to set higher targets.

The Executive Secretary of the UN climate convention, Yvo de Boer, said at a Globe International meeting in London today that these developments in the US and China are signs that governments are using the economic troubles as a window of opportunity for reforming their economies.

At the same meeting, former UK environment minister Elliott Morley said that the economic crisis could be 'just the thing' to galvanise governments into making the deep radical changes needed to set the world's economies on a more sustainable track.