As you are no doubt aware, chancellor Alistair Darling yesterday outlined his pre-Budget Report. Green measures included were: An extra £100m (with a further £50m brought forward) for 60,000 more households to properly insulate their homes. The chancellor also announced that £535m would be rapidly invested on energy efficiency, rail transport and environmental protection.
As we have said before, any move towards green energy and energy efficiency has to be broadly welcomed. However, has Mr Darling gone far enough?. Possibly not, it all appears to be a little piecemeal. In these difficult economic times, were we being too optimistic in hoping that the chancellor would grasp this opportunity to stimualte the economy by investing in a more long term green energy programme?. A large scale and inspirational series of measures, focussing on green energy schemes at all levels and sectors (including transport, housing and business) with the potential to create thousands of jobs would have been music to our ears. Lets hope that the chancellor ratches the existing measures up a notch in the budget itself.
Here is some typically excellent analysis of the report from the BBCs political guru Nick Robinson and business editor Robert Peston – the man more people in the UK trust on the economy than David Cameron or the Prime Minister!
