New Economics Foundation and Finance Innovation Lab suggest loan scheme backed by Bank of England could benefit up to 8m homes

Millions of UK households could save hundreds of pounds a year on their energy bills if the government were to approve low-cost loans for solar panel installation, research has found.

Solar panels with batteries are one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity and reduce energy bills, but with an upfront cost of about £6,000 they are still beyond the reach of most cash-strapped UK households while other countries forge ahead with installation.

Energy secretary hails £100bn milestone in this parliament and says it is ‘only the start of what we want to achieve’

Ed Miliband has hailed a boost to UK jobs and growth as government data reveals that private sector companies have pledged more than £100bn in investment into the green economy so far in this parliament.

Offshore wind, solar power and the electricity grid make up the bulk of the planned investment, most of it between 2024 and 2031, which will go to all regions of the UK and comes from a mixture of UK companies and overseas sources including the EU and Japan.

Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate action

Keir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.

This is new in British politics, where a cross-party consensus on the climate and environment has held at least since the days of Margaret Thatcher. She warned the UN of the climate crisis in 1988; David Cameron in 2006 urged voters to “vote blue, go green”; Theresa May enshrined in law the requirement to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; Boris Johnson championed the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021; even Rishi Sunak only tried a partial rollback of green policies as a last desperate throw before calling an election.

Government plan to de-link gas and electricity prices aims to reduce bills for consumers after global surge in prices

Households in England, Scotland and Wales could save nearly £200 a year on their energy bills if the government stepped into the market to act as the sole buyer of electricity, according to a thinktank.

The research found that public procurement of electricity, meaning the government would become the “single buyer” of power before it is resold to consumers, could shave billions of pounds from electricity prices.

Experts say increased use of crops for fuel is ‘dangerous game’ that could send food price inflation soaring

Demand for biofuels is likely to leap by nearly a third this year, which could send food price inflation soaring further and push the world closer to a global food crisis.

More countries are opting to increase biofuel use as the price of oil has jumped to nearly $100 a barrel after the US-Israeli attacks on Iran and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.

Energy specialists say abandoning net zero and increasing oil and gas drilling would cause more instability for Britons

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Abandoning net zero and drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea would be a massive setback for the UK and would not help the economy, leading experts have said in response to claims by the former prime minister Tony Blair.

“This is a bizarre intervention to make during the worst May heatwave on record and when the Iran crisis is providing yet more evidence of the enormous costs of oil and gas,” said Ed Matthew, the UK programme director at the E3G thinktank. “Clean energy is cheaper energy – it protects our bills from prices skyrocketing, its running costs are virtually zero, and it doesn’t cause climate change which threatens economic collapse ... The government should ignore Blair’s ideological nonsense and focus on what works.”