Delivering his eighth Budget announcement to a jubilant House of Commons, the Chancellor provided some positive news on carbon reporting regulations and the next Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction, and also confirmed new funding for energy storage demand-side response technologies, and Britain’s flood defences.
But the Chancellor failed to answer a number of other key green policy questions. What about air quality? The future of the Levy Control Framework? Mandatory carbon reporting? Support for SMEs on energy efficiency? The recent CCS cancellation? And the historic Paris climate deal – surely that got a mention?
Unfortunately not. Ultimately, this is another Budget that has failed to rise to the challenge set by that ambitious Paris agreement, and Osborne just didn’t quite deliver the Easter egg of green pledges we were all hoping for.