Institutional investors rushed to buy the UK’s first green sovereign bond with a 0.87% yield. The government will launch Green Savings Bonds through the national savings scheme. If it offered the “market-leading rate” for retail savings of 1.8%, the scheme would cost taxpayers £210m per year. Setting the rates lower could look unattractive to customers.

Wind farms were paid £1.85 million to shut down this week – at a time when consumers face huge rises in energy bills because of the spiralling cost of natural gas. The turbines were switched off, because the electricity they would have produced could not have reached the regions that needed it. Instead, electricity from gas-fired power stations was used.