Environmental campaigners have raised concern about Jacob Rees-Mogg being put answerable for power coverage after the Tory politician beforehand warned towards “local weather alarmism”.
Rees-Mogg was made enterprise secretary on Tuesday as new prime minister Liz Truss appointed her cupboard. The job means he might be given the power temporary amid hovering family payments off the again of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He tweeted: “It’s an honour to be appointed as the brand new secretary of state for enterprise, power and industrial technique.
“I look ahead to serving the prime minister and the nation through the difficult instances forward.”
The hardline Brexiteer and Boris Johnson loyalist, who’s a product of Eton and Trinity Faculty, Oxford, began his working life as an funding banker.
In 2007, he co-founded asset administration agency Somerset Capital Administration with a gaggle of colleagues.
The agency at present manages about £6.9 billion value of belongings for establishments, together with pension funds, from its bases in London and Singapore.
Up to now, Rees–Mogg has expressed considerations about “local weather alarmism”, mentioned humanity ought to adapt to, reasonably than mitigate, local weather change, and warned that the drive to attending to web zero emissions is chargeable for excessive power costs.
He additionally mentioned he desires his constituents to have low-cost power “reasonably greater than I would really like them to have windmills”.
Truss has agreed to the UK’s 2050 web zero targets however the brand new enterprise secretary can be anticipated to assist lead her plans to re-start fracking for shale fuel within the UK.
After the announcement, Inexperienced Celebration MP Caroline Lucas tweeted: “OMG she’s solely gone and finished it.
“Liz Truss has put fossil fuel-loving, deregulation-obsessed Jacob Rees-Mogg answerable for each power and local weather crises – he isn’t a severe individual and this isn’t a severe authorities.
“Can solely hope he wakes up in time to recognise scale of emergency.”
Rebecca Newsom, head of politics for Greenpeace UK, mentioned: “Rees-Mogg is the final one that ought to be answerable for the power temporary, on the worst doable second.
“Rees-Mogg blamed ‘local weather alarmism’ for top power payments, pushing David Cameron to ‘minimize the inexperienced crap’ like incentives for photo voltaic, wind and power effectivity – which has added £150 to each power invoice. Appointing him to the temporary now suggests the Tories have discovered nothing from some years of power coverage incompetence.
“This can both be an enormous personal aim for Truss’s efforts to deal with the price of residing disaster or Rees-Mogg should do the steepest studying curve in historical past as he will get to grips with the problems going through our nation.”
