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Professor Michael Grubb's inaugural lecture: Energy, Europe and the Economics of Innovation.

This lecture explores how and why most economic theory still fails to grasp the central characteristics of industrial innovation.

11 July 2018

Michael Grubb

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Energy was at the heart of the industrial revolution and oil and electricity helped to shape the 20th Century. Innovation is increasingly recognised as crucial to modern competitiveness.

Drawing on the book Planetary Economics, Professor Grubb offers a wider theoretical framework and explains how this can reshape our view of both the economics and political dimensions of effective policy, including (but not confined to) the energy transition.

Professor Grubb argues that unique characteristics of the energy sector amplify the mutual benefits of pan-European copperation - suggesting that the emerging EU Energy Union should be expanded beyond the borders of the EU itself, and hence setting out the rationale for a Pan-European Energy Union in the interests of economy, security and geopolitics. 

Download the full text below:

File
michael_grubb_inaugural_lecture_text.pdf

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Things to watch...

  • Watch Professor Jim Watson's inaugural lecture here.
  • Watch 'Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth', delivered by Antonia Gawel here.

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