In his classic Inferno, Dante envisioned a separate level of the underworld for opportunists. Now it seems some of those same opportunists in the United Kingdom have been cooking up a carbon-fueled inferno of their own here on the surface. 

Apparently, a number of UK firms had been continuing existing levels of renewable energy use while simply creating more expensive “green” packages; the Brits, climate conscious people that they are, gobbled them up like so much fish and chips, with 350,000 households signing on.

But according to new regulations announced by the UK’s energy regulatory body, all consumer energy packages labeled “green” must actually involve some additional measure of investment from energy providers into clean energy. 

The new regulations should also provide a measure of protection against such greenwashing in the future by forcing the energy provider to explain just what exactly makes their new energy package so green.  

I’ll voice my own hearty “huzzah” to the correction, but I feel like without any punitive action against those who misrepresented their environmental claims, more firms in other sectors of the economy are going to be all too eager to try similar green-baiting stunts in the future.