Fuel duty is frozen, but the chancellor remains silent on home insulation, oil and gas windfall tax, and onshore wind farms.

The latest budget will do little to meet the UK’s net zero carbon goals, will miss opportunities to create a green economy, and will burden households with high energy bills driven by the price of fossil fuels.

Jeremy Hunt was a self-described “green Tory” as a backbencher. He nodded to the UK’s green ambitions by promoting nuclear power and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in his speech.

In the budget, however, there needed to be an indication of the hoped-for emphasis on home insulation or eliminating barriers to wind farms.

Instead, the freeze on fuel duty will benefit drivers of fuel-guzzling SUVs and put the UK in the starting blocks as other nations, including the US, the EU, and China, race ahead in creating green jobs, according to analysts.

Luke Murphy stated, “There is a global race to the top to achieve net-zero emissions, and the UK risks falling significantly behind its competitors.” The government must learn from the US and Europe, increase public investment, and develop a green industrial strategy to safeguard the future economy and environment.”

Hunt reiterated the four Es for future investment in the UK: enterprise, education, employment, and everywhere. Josh Burke, the senior policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute, a London School of Economics division, stated, “This budget failed to provide a long-term investment plan to accelerate the transition to sustainable growth. The two Es lacking from the industrial strategy are energy and the environment.”

Ami McCarthy, a political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, stated that the focus on small nuclear plants, also known as small modular reactors, and carbon capture and storage (CCS), both early-stage technologies, overlooked far more realistic opportunities to pursue low-carbon power.

This misguided budget demonstrates the stranglehold fossil fuel and nuclear lobbyists have on this administration.

She questioned, “Why else would it take such a risky gamble on unproven technologies?” “It is irresponsible to waste taxpayer money on nuclear reactors that don’t even exist yet and on fanciful carbon capture, and it does nothing to reduce our current emissions.”

Alfie Stirling remarked that the transportation policy was another missed opportunity. Drivers of larger vehicles benefit the most from the continuing freeze on fuel duty, while those with lower incomes are more likely to utilize public transportation with lower carbon emissions.

“With the thirteenth consecutive freeze on fuel duty, the government continues to subsidize polluting travel and disproportionately benefits higher earners,” said Stirling.

After the budget announcement, the energy secretary, Grant Shapps, told members of parliament that he was “busting a gut” to install solar panels on the rooftops of large buildings, such as warehouses. 

He informed the environmental audit committee that he was working to eliminate the need for planning permission for solar installations exceeding 1 MW, impeding installing solar panels on commercial buildings’ roofs.

However, he indicated that he would not mandate the installation of solar panels in new homes, as some lawmakers had urged. 

In its forthcoming future homes standard, the government will require that new homes produce 75% less carbon dioxide than homes built in 2013; ministers will leave it up to housebuilders to determine how this is accomplished, claiming that mandating specific technologies would “reduce innovation.” MPs were told, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” “The hesitance is regarding the statement ‘this is the only thing you can include.'”

After the budget, Shapps also promised a far greater green push. A high court ruling from last year requires the government to publish clear plans for reaching the net zero target by the end of this month. Simultaneously, a response to Chris Skidmore’s review of the net zero targets, published earlier this year, will be released.

According to Shapps, the announcement, due in two weeks, will include plans to increase hydrogen, wind power, solar energy, and heat pumps. “I will have much more to say then,” he told lawmakers.