Cameron’s ‘greenest-ever’ government should be red-faced on diesel subsidies

Even as the UK commits to lower carbon emissions at UN talks, it is handing out huge subsidies to heavy polluters while discouraging renewables investors

Even a successful fiction writer would be unlikely to attempt to pull off an absurd conceit whereby the self-styled "greenest-ever" government hands out subsidies to the most heavily polluting companies just as it prepares to approve a global climate change treaty.

And yet last week British ministers did just that as a scheme developed under their electricity market reform programme gave 170m to energy companies so that they could build new diesel generators to run for 15 years.