BP, Europe's largest oil company, on Monday said it would double its investment in alternative and renewable energy, a business it said was fast reaching a "critical inflection point"... The company will hire about 500 people for a new business unit, BP Alternative Energy, which will focus on ways to generate electricity that limit the release of carbon into the atmosphere... Tony Juniper, director of the environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth, called BP's move "a step in the right direction" but said that companies needed to go "much further, much faster if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change".