Insight Web Extra
In the second part of a two-part series, we take a look at prospects for climate change legislation at the international level in 2009 and their possible effects on the nuclear energy industry.
March 2009—To be truly effective, climate change legislation has to be global in scope. A coal plant in China emits carbon dioxide into the same atmosphere everyone shares and contributes to global warming worldwide. Organizers of the climate conference in Copenhagen next December hope to create a framework for an international cap-and-trade program to replace the earlier Kyoto protocol.
A key challenge will be getting emerging economies to agree to reduce their emissions. Increasingly, developing nations are recognizing the risks of climate change for their own populations and are starting to act more aggressively on climate issues.
In particular, China—which just surpassed the United States as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases—has recently indicated its willingness to come to an agreement on climate change.
“We would like to work with the United States to make concrete progress on this issue,” said Jiang Yu, foreign ministry spokeswoman.
Overall, many experts and policymakers feel that something must be accomplished this year, even if it is not as robust as some may wish.
“This is the year to finalize an agreement,” said Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief. “Everybody is working in that direction. ... That is the sentiment and the determination they have.”
The hope is that even if the United States cannot bring a domestic climate change plan to the table at Copenhagen, at least some overall architecture for a global cap-and-trade roadmap should be agreed to.
Nuclear Contribution to Emissions Targets
The role of nuclear power and other non-emitting sources in a global cap-and-trade system would be indirect, but the technology could assist greatly. Simply put, as the price of emitting greenhouse gases increases, the value of non-emitting sources will increase as well.
According to NEI estimates, globally the current fleet of nuclear plants avoids more than 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. Although the avoided emissions from existing nuclear plants will likely not be counted against future emissions reductions, the addition of more nuclear plants to the current fleet would make it easier to reach the strict targets set by a cap-and-trade system.
As the effects of climate change become more serious, many nations are increasingly and explicitly acknowledging nuclear’s share in their energy mix. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommended nuclear as a “key climate change mitigating” technology in its May 2007 report, “Mitigation of Climate Change.”
“I have never seen a credible scenario for reducing emissions that did not include nuclear energy,” noted Yvo do Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the organization responsible to global climate change treaties.
The European Parliament voted earlier this year to endorse an energy report that, among other provisions, favors nuclear energy as a tool for meeting aggressive emission targets. The report cited “the significance of nuclear energy, which is produced in 15 out of 27 member states, and which meets around one-third of electricity demand in the European Union.” Italy has scrapped its moratorium on building nuclear plants and has plans to build four new plants. The Swedish government is also planning to reverse its plans to shut down existing plants and build new ones to replace them.
There are currently 44 new nuclear reactors under construction in countries as diverse as China, India, Finland, Japan and Russia, as these nations seek to use energy sources that have low emissions and are already a proven part of the energy mix. As climate change legislation becomes a clearer reality, it’s a trend that is likely to continue.
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