In a time when economic prudence is necessary, the United Kingdom's new Conservative Party government installed in May has wasted no time in taking an ax to policies it believes will be costly to the taxpayer.

However, a number of these are high-profile "green" policies, designed to reduce the energy consumption of its building stock. This has seen the new government crossing swords with the HVAC sector, along with the combined might of environmentalists, the construction industry and the renewable energy business.

In the space of a month, the government has dropped its commitment to a binding target for building "zero-carbon homes" (carbon neutral homes by 2016 and nondomestic buildings by 2019). Then, in a further U-turn that surprised many, pulled the plug on financing for its Green Deal energy-efficiency incentive scheme.

The former move had experts like David Frise, the head of sustainability at the Building and Engineering Services Association, decrying the lack of logic.

"Why should it come as any surprise that one of the first major U-turns of the new government was to abandon sustainability measures that never sat comfortably with his instinctively deregulatory ministers?" Frise said. "Admittedly, the definition of 'zero carbon' was loose at best, but couldn't there have been a resetting process and an effort at a better definition carried out, in consultation with the industry?

"Simply dumping the targets and throwing away almost a decade of investment is a retrograde step."

But it is the latter move that has caused the most consternation. The Green Deal featured financial help for a package of measures designed to improve energy efficiency, primarily in domestic dwellings.

However, it also impacted commercial and industrial buildings — beginning with insulation, and taking in condensing boilers and the whole suite of renewable heating options, from solar PV to biomass to all forms of heat pump. The aim of the scheme was that any payment made for the technology improvements would be less than the savings through energy efficiency — thus it was a net-zero cost to the customer.

The government decision to ax the funding mechanism behind it — enabling customers to afford the initial capital outlay — effectively ends the scheme, although it is understood that applications currently in mid-process will be honored.

The decision — which the Department for Energy and Climate Change said was "in the light of low take-up and concerns about industry standards and a move to protect taxpayers" — immediately drew stinging criticism, both from environmental groups and from the sector bodies that had helped to set it up.

Friends of the Earth declared the move "an act of grotesque hypocrisy" and "a vicious treasury assault on the environment." Chief executive Craig Bennett went further.

"The government's credibility on tackling climate change is hanging in tatters," Bennet said. "This government will be judged on action not words — and far from being one of the greenest governments ever [as Prime Minister David Cameron declared in 2010], it seems set to be one of the grayest."

When announcing the end to the financing, Environment Secretary Amber Rudd said: "We are on the side of hardworking families and businesses — which is why we cannot continue to fund the Green Deal."

Instead, she said, it would be down to the commercial market to offer incentives to consumers to improve energy efficiency.

"It's now time for the building industry and consumer groups to work with us to make new policy and build a system that works," Rudd said. "Together we can achieve this government's ambition to make homes warmer and drive down bills for 1 million more homes by 2020 — and to do so at the best value for money for taxpayers."

Joanne Wade, director at the Association for the Conservation of Energy, expressed the consternation of the sector to Building Magazine.

"At the moment all we've had is what's ending," Wade said. "Whilst we support the government taking a step back, we are very concerned about the lack of current policy. The focus on affordability does seem to be about cutting back on taxpayer money being spent rather than making energy efficiency more affordable. It's a very short-term view."

Rudd sought to flesh out some of the thinking behind the "ungreening" of policy in a speech to an audience of financiers. It appears that the government expects a more commercially-driven approach to tackling climate change.

Looking ahead to the December global climate talks in Paris, she said, "The global agreement to be finalized in Paris must work for business so that the private sector can play its full part in shaping the solutions to climate change through innovation, technology, enterprise and competition."

In her view, the days of government subsidy — what the government used to call "incentives" — for measures such as energy efficiency are numbered.

All this amounts to some pretty radical change, and let's make no bones about it, the sector set to suffer hardest is HVAC, for the simple reasons that all of the Green Deal technology measures were coming from HVAC businesses — not to mention the assessments for the eligibility of customers for the measures, of which a high proportion were delivered by building services engineers. The decision threatens to cause significant business damage to the HVAC sector.

Typical of the apoplectic reaction from the sector was a response from Julia Evans, chief executive of not-for-profit building services research body BSRIA.

"More and more, BSRIA is getting the impression that energy and carbon reduction issues are being viewed as a burden to government, which is inhibiting not only the industry but the economy at large," Evans said.

"The Secretary of State's speech is arguing that the removal of subsidy will strengthen the economy, and a strong economy will respond to the carbon agenda. But the issue is clearly the lack of stability in subsidy. And without such stability, industry can't plan for a 'green future.' ... Government policies will not lead to the low-carbon society they claim they want — they are destroying the U.K. renewables industry just at the point where it's almost competitive."

Given the current climate of austerity in the U.K., these could spell dark times ahead for the HVAC sector, unless some other form of pump-priming replaces the likes of the Green Deal. For its part, the government has committed to a review of energy-efficiency standards and enforcement, and to working with the industry on alternatives.

But the U.K. HVAC sector must be wondering whether the much-lauded — and global first — renewable heat incentive will be next for the fiscal scalpel.