Is this the right time to be investing into the environment?
As more and more UK consumers feel the rising cost of energy hitting their budgets harder and harder there are calls for the government to abandon its environmental and green policies in the short term. There has been a substantial increase in both individual obligations to the environment and industrial regulations to bring the UK more into line with the rest of the world. The cost of this is put at upwards of £100 billion and EON UK, one of the U.K.'s leading energy producers, has cited this as a reason why energy costs have not gone down.
There is now a growing consensus for the UK government to revisit a number of environmental policies which have come into play over the last couple of years and postpone investment in the short term. The UK consumer is literally being squeezed from all sides with income reducing in real terms, the price of energy increasing and the housing market under serious pressure. Whether the government would be brave enough to delay short-term investment into its many environmental issues remains to be seen but at some stage something will have to give.
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