George Osborne has announced a multi-billion pound package of green tax cuts that he said would help UK businesses – and manufacturers in particular – cut their energy costs and ensure they remained competitive with the rest of the world.
The £7 billion package was the biggest single measure, along with cuts to export costs, for businesses announced in the Chancellor’s 2014 Budget unveiled on 19 March. It will see the Carbon Price Floor (CPF), a tax on fossil fuels used to generate electricity, frozen at £18 per tonne from 2016-17 until the end of the decade. Under original proposals, the CPF would have increased to almost £30 per tonne by 2020.
“This will save a mid-sized manufacturer almost £50,000 on their annual energy bill,” Osborne said, pointing to the rising cost of energy bills on UK manufacturing businesses as one of the reasons holding growth back in Britain.
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