I was very interested to note an article by Simon Evans for Carbon Brief yesterday, although it was actually published in January.

As he noted, in 2013 in response to a gas price increase this sort of reaction was noted in the media, and was acted on by David Cameron's governments:

As Simon Evans noted:

Energy bills in the UK are nearly £2.5bn higher than they would have been if climate policies had not been scrapped over the past decade, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

The changes included gutting energy-efficiency subsidies, effectively banning onshore wind in England and scrapping the zero-carbon homes standard. They were introduced after a November 2013 Sun frontpage reported that then-prime minister David Cameron's answer to rising energy bills was to “get rid of the green crap”, meaning to cut climate policies.

As he also noted this was the consequence:

He added:

In 2015, the Conservative administration then ended subsidies for onshore wind and introduced planning reforms in England that, together, were widely viewed as a “ban” on the technology.

Following a grace period for projects then already in the pipeline, the capacity of onshore windfarms being completed in the UK each year dropped dramatically after 2017.

This was the result:

New capacity creation has crashed.

Now we face significant energy price increases.

Carbon Brief estimates that if these cuts had not taken place we might save £2.5 billion a year now.

So much for green crap.