When oil prices hit new highs in recent months, he sold energy stocks and bought those of heavy energy users.
Because the company's customers are particularly heavy energy users, such efforts can have a disproportionate impact on the environment.
Elsewhere in the budget, Osborne increased the exemptions from carbon taxes of industries that are heavy energy users and, therefore, heavy polluters.
Telling heavy energy users how much less power their neighbors consumed prompted them to cut their own use, according to a 2007 study in Psychological Science.
Yet, contrary to the expectation that revenue-neutrality would increase the political feasibility of the carbon charge by not penalizing heavy energy users, Yale found the concept to be complex and challenging to communicate.
Equally, more grants to support the creation of apprenticeships and constraining the growth of energy bills for heavy energy users are the industrial equivalent of apple pie and motherhood – a matter of little controversy and useful at the margin, but hardly transformative.
Patrick Liddy, director of EnerNOC, one of the companies developing such tools, said: "Demand-side response technology is mature [and] provides many benefits for the UK, including engaging heavy energy users such as factories, commercial property and public sector estates in keeping the network balanced.
Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest "costs" of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels.
Hence, Germany offers substantial discounts to heavy energy users, such as its automobile plants.
George Osborne announced a series of measures in March, including a £1bn scheme for heavy energy users to get relief from green taxes.
Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices.
