George Osborne reiterated today the UK government’s “determination to be the greenest government ever”. But given what we already knew, most of the new information contained in Wednesday’s Budget seems to be set against that agenda.
Let’s take the measures one-by-one:
1) CCS support. We already knew that £1bn was pledged for round one. The new information in the Budget is that round two will be funded largely by the carbon floor price.
But as Mr Osborne himself admitted, this won’t be enough (at least at the level it has been set) on its own. Further money will be required from general taxation, which leaves second round CCS projects fighting alongside everything else for a rapidly diminishing pool of government spending.
