UCL ISR Professor responds to Pope’s encyclical

18 June 2015

Professor Michael Grubb, Professor of International Energy and Climate Change Policy at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources has responded to Pope Francis’s encyclical announced today:

“This will surely be remembered as the day it became clear that the UK has two governments. One that welcomes today the Pope’s Encyclical, is pressing for stronger action on climate change, which signed an unambiguous cross-party pledge to phase out coal, and which committed in its manifesto to deliver clean renewable energy as cost-effectively as possible.

"The other is the government which declared today it will prematurely end supports for the cheapest and most cost-effective of the UK’s renewable resources, which has injected fear and uncertainty into renewable energy investors, which seems set to cut back support for energy efficiency programmes which have helped to cut consumer bills and avoided the need for billions of new investment, and which proposes to slash the budget of the Department charged with implementing all this.

Sooner rather than later David Cameron must clarify which government he is actually leading.”

All views expressed above are those of Professor Michael Grubb and do not necessarily reflect those of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources or University College London.