I sat through Wednesday’s Autumn Statement from UK Chancellor George Osborne with increasing disappointment. Normally such a set piece speech will have at the very least a token mention of the green economy, but we got nothing. Nada. Rien. Chochote.

Even worse, we got exactly the kind of subsidies for fossil fuel extraction that his boss David Cameron said we needed rid of back in September. As Cameron put it:

In short we need a framework built on green growth not green tape.

There are four issues the Chancellor should have considered:

1. Leadership: the mixed messages coming from the top of Government will do nothing to encourage investment in the low carbon economy. A clear steer is needed.
2. Innovation: the fossil fuel industry is mature and has little scope for driving technological development. Boosting Government investment in, say, the smart grid and/or energy storage could trigger a cascade in innovations for future energy and transport systems.
3. Costs: despite all the hype about oil prices plummeting in the last month or so, they are still higher than they ever were pre-2007. Renewable energy has huge amount of scope to get cheaper, the price of fossil fuels will inexorably rise in the medium term.
4. Politics: given the level of public support for renewables, leadership on the green economy would have appealed to centrist swing voters.

And he if doesn’t believe me, he can always ask his boss.