David Cameron and Chris Huhne, photo by DECCgovuk (Flickr Creative Commons)

Former UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband thinks the new coalition government’s energy policies are a ‘huge disappointment’ to industry and to the country.

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? He’s in the shadow cabinet and that’s sort of their job. Yet it seems Miliband is indeed more pro-active in terms of helping green industry than his replacement, current Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne.

From BBC News:

On a range of issues such as wind power, renewable heat and the green investment bank the government was going “backwards not forwards” compared to the Labour administration, Mr Miliband claimed.

Besides all the big cuts they are making, the coalition government is throwing its green eggs into three baskets: cutting energy use and investing in electricity and carbon markets.

The Telegraph’s environment editor Geoffrey Lean is not convinced. He details the almost across the board cuts the Tory-Lib Dem coalition has made, though fairly acknowledges their commitment to combat climate change (how can they do both?) as well as their plans to help households become more energy efficient. The government has also confirmed that it is renewing the commitment to subsidize biogas.

Across Whitehall the Business Secretary,Vince Cable, has axed a key body dealing with electronic waste. And Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, has withdrawn funding from the Sustainable Development Commission, scrapped the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (thus showing what she thinks of ministers’ two sources of independent, non-political scrutiny and advice) and abolished the Commission for Rural Communities, which tackled deprivation in the countryside. The savings were minuscule.

Read Geoffrey Lean’s entire piece in the Telegraph:

David Cameron runs the greenest government ever? Tell it to the birds