The Tories railed against ‘green crap’. Why trust them to solve the energy crisis now?
In the grip of the energy crisis, gas prices are already due to increase by 50% in April, and will spike higher later in the year, while the chancellor’s modest mitigations do little for unaffordable bills. Boris Johnson is about to produce an energy strategy to cut reliance on Russian imports and speed UK generation. He wobbles on fracking.
But before he boasts some “world-beating” plan, hold on to this salient fact. If the Tories had not blocked progress on renewables and insulation over the last decade, Britain would already be generating more clean energy than the amount provided by the fuels imported from Russia.
Tories may recall those sunlit days leading up to the 2010 election when David Cameron, as the green man of folklore, posed in the Arctic cheerily driving a husky team, as he rebranded his party with an oak tree and a Vote Blue, Go Green slogan. His greenery was environmental gauze to signify an end to the nasty party: he did the job pretty well.
He did preserve Labour’s green policies initially, but in 2013 Cameron panicked when Labour’s Ed Miliband pledged a price freeze, after energy prices had risen by 37% in three years. Cut the “green crap” Cameron ordered, which was duly splashed across the Sun’s front page. The consequences were far-reaching. Stripping out green subsidies caused the number of homes getting loft or cavity wall insulation to plummet immediately by 92% and 74% respectively: those figures never recovered. He scrapped zero carbon building regulations, so a million homes have been built since 2016 with poor energy standards: our energy bills are £2.5bn higher as a direct result, says Simon Evans of Carbon Brief.
Remember Cameron trying to fix a wind turbine to his roof as a charming gesture?
Read more on theguardian.com
