A “robust” price of carbon as well as investment in renewable energy research and development is needed to tackle climate change.

Lord Adair Turner, Chairman of the Institute of New Economic Thinking spoke to ELN at the launch of the Global Apollo Programme, which aims to tackle climate change by making renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels.

Lord Turner said: “What also needs, as far as possible, a good robust price of carbon. We are saying today a good robust price of carbon is not enough, you need the R&D expenditures as well but equally the R&D is not enough we need a strong price of carbon. We’ve got to try and agree that globally if it is at all possible and if not, introduce it unilaterally in different major areas of the world because we’ve got to have that incentive, that pull incentive through the market place as well as the R&D technological progress.”

Lord Turner believes it is very important to tackle climate change as the increase in carbon emissions will harm the environment at a “very, very big cost to human welfare”.

He added: “The cost would be bigger actually in some of the poorest parts of the world like India and Africa. I think it is important that we solve this problem, [it is] ethically important but it is also the case that we have the technologies to do it without that being a sacrifice of economic growth.”