Image of Nicholas Stern

Nicholas Stern

Nicholas Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE. He is the President of the British Academy

Public-private collaboration key to climate targets

| Dec 14 2015 13:22 | Comments |

Governments, local and national, must work with private sector Read more

Action on fossil fuel subsidies must be accelerated

| Nov 13 2015 05:30 |
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Smog in Harbin, northeast China  © Getty Images

When the leaders of the world’s biggest economies gather this weekend at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, they must recognise the real scale of subsidies for fossil fuels and accelerate their eradication.

In 2009, G20 leaders agreed to “phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies while providing targeted support for the poorest”. They acknowledged that “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change”.

While that commitment has been restated at many summits since, action to implement it has been unacceptably slow. Read more