Vatican to become eighth country to achieve 100% green energy, Pope says

‘Humanity has the technological means necessary to face this environmental transformation,’ Pope Francis says

Solar panels covering the roof of the Paul VI audience hall at the Vatican with the Basilica of Saint Peter in the background on 26 November, 2008 (Getty Images)

Vatican City is set to become the eighth country in the world to generate 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy after Pope Francis announced plans to build a solar plant.

In an apostolic letter, the pontiff said the project will be constructed on Vatican-owned property outside of Rome that spans 424 hectares, adding capacity to existing solar panel installations in the city state.

“We need to make a transition towards a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, setting the objective of climate neutrality,” Pope Francis wrote in the letter, titled Fratello Sole, or Brother Sun.

“Humanity has the technological means necessary to face this environmental transformation and its pernicious ethical, social, economic and political consequences, and solar energy plays a fundamental role.”

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The endeavour will make the smallest country by land mass entirely energy independent, with all of its electricity needs met by solar power.

Once completed, Vatican City will join Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Ethiopia, Iceland and Congo as countries that generate more than 99.7 per cent of their electricity from renewables, according to data compiled by Stanford University Professor Mark Z. Jacobson earlier this year.

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A further 40 countries generate at least 50 per cent of their electricity from renewable energy technologies like geothermal, hydro, solar or wind.

“We don’t need miracle technologies,” Professor Jacobson told The Independent in April. “We need to stop emissions by electrifying everything and providing the electricity with Wind, Water and Solar (WWS), which includes onshore wind, solar photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, geothermal electricity, small hydroelectricity, and large hydroelectricity.”

The environment has been a central focus to Pope Francis’s papacy, having stated in 2015 that human-induced climate change was one of his main concerns about the future of the planet.

Vatican City joined the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2022, which aims to address “dangerous human interference with the climate system”.

In May, the Pope claimed the climate crisis had “gotten to the point of no return”, describing its current trajectory as “a road to death”.

In an interview with CBS News, he said: “It is very difficult to create an awareness of this. [World leaders] hold a conference, everybody is in agreement, they all sign, and then bye-bye. But we have to be very clear, global warming is alarming.”