Last week saw George Osborne announce his fourth annual Budget to the British public, and it didn't look good for green energy policy. The Chancellor's shunning of renewable energy methods in favour of "low cost energy sources" such as shale gas has sparked outrage from a number of environment-friendly movements, particularly the Green Party and Greenpeace.

Speaking on Twitter, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas noted that "not a single word" was made concerning renewable energy in the Budget. In a longer statement made for the party's website, she went on further to say:

"With the UK's green economy now worth over £120bn - 9% of GDP - providing nearly a million jobs and generating a third of our most recent economic growth according to the CBI, it is completely inexplicable that George Osborne keeps pretending it doesn't exist."

In contrast to this, the Chancellor said that "creating a low-carbon economy should be done in a way that creates jobs - not costs them", yet didn't specify exactly how this should be achieved. Instead he continued to encourage the development of shale gas in the UK, stating that the government would set up a tax allowance for fracking companies developing gas fields. Shale gas is already notably controversial due to its extraction method - it involves pumping water, sand and chemicals into deep wells at high pressure, creating fissures in shale rock releasing the trapped gas.

This tax incentive also came under fire from Lucas, who considered it "outrageous that the Government is willing to gift more tax breaks to companies drilling for hard to reach shale". She continued by calling the whole thing a "costly gamble that risks keeping the UK addicted to polluting fossil fuels at precisely the time we should be leaving them in the ground". Greenpeace campaigner Lawrence Carter added: "Bungs to the gas industry make it harder for Britain to meet its climate targets and stifle the low-carbon sector, which provided one-third of all UK growth in 2011-12."

Despite all the evidence, it seems shocking that such a strong and fast-growing sector in Britain has been forgotten.