Faculty of Law welcomes Prof. Andrew Leach

We are pleased to welcome Professor Andrew Leach from the Alberta School of Business into a joint appointment with the Faculty of Arts (Department of Economics) and the Faculty of Law.

Leach is an energy and environmental economist with a passion for public policy and particular interest in climate change.

“I'm very excited to have the opportunity to join both the Faculty of Law and the
Department of Economics. Climate, energy, and environmental policy in Canada will be defined by constitutional challenges and constraints in the coming decade, in ways that will test our federation. I am thrilled to be able to continue working on these issues in my new role,” Leach says.

Leach has written extensively on Alberta’s oil and gas and electricity sectors, and his research was recently cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in upholding the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act. He has a long record of public, industry and government engagement, including serving as Chair of the Government of Alberta’s Climate Leadership Panel and as the first Visiting Scholar at Environment Canada.

Speaking about his ability to teach for two distinct areas of the university, he said the following:

“Some of the overlap in teaching between my two roles will, I hope, provide unique insights to students in both law and in economics. I expect to focus on my environmental law and policy seminar in the fall term, and in the Winter term I'll be teaching both utilities law and energy economics. I expect that teaching these classes at the same time will provide a lot of opportunities for inter-disciplinary learning and analysis.”

Before joining the University of Alberta in 2006, Leach was Assistant Professor at HEC Montréal, the University of Montréal’s affiliated business school. He has a PhD in Economics from Queen’s University, BSc (Environmental Sciences) and MA (Economics) degrees from the University of Guelph, and recently completed an LLM here in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. 

Dean Barbara Billingsley shared her enthusiasm for welcoming Leach to his new role.

"We are very excited to have Professor Leach join the faculty. His expertise and ongoing interdisciplinary research in energy and environmental regulation and policy expands our faculty's capacity in these key areas and will undoubtedly be of great benefit to our program and to our students,” she says.