CONSULTING

Nuclear Power vs. Renewable Energy Deployment
Introduction
The December 2015 United National Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in
Paris is rightly seen as an important milestone in the global fight to avoid dangerous climate
change. The foundation of the conference’s outcome was the national pledges for mitigation
actions through until 2030; while voluntary, they have a formal reporting and review mechanism.
The Paris agreement noted that these pledges, when aggregated, did not meet the objective “with
holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial
levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels”.
For the Paris Agreement 162 national pledges called Intended National Determined Contributions
(INDCs) were submitted to the UNFCCC covering around 95 percent of global emissions in 2010
and 98 percent of the global population. The extent to which nuclear power is included within
these plans is limited as just 31 countries currently operating nuclear power, therefore, only
around one in five Paris pledges. Furthermore, expansion of the sector, through construction of
new reactors, is only taking place in 12 of these countries with an additional two countries,
Belarus and United Arab Emirates, building for the first time.
Within the actual INDCs only eleven countries mentioned that they were operating or considering
to operate nuclear power as part of their mitigation strategy and even fewer (six) actually state
that they were proposing to expand its use (Belarus, India, Japan, Turkey and UAE). This compares
with 144 that mention the use of renewable energy and 111, which explicitly mention targets or
plans for expanding its use as shown in Figure 32. This highlights the extent to which nuclear
power is a niche carbon abatement strategy, compared to the use of renewables which is
universal.
The limited use of nuclear power to address climate change concerns, especially compared to
renewable energies is further demonstrated in the ongoing review of the Paris Agreement. This
mandates meetings every five years, starting in 2018, to review progress, and assess how to
increase the emissions reduction plans in order to meet the international agreed targets for 2030.
However, it is highly unlikely that many, if any, countries will be able to increase their use of
nuclear power over and above the level already included in their existing pledges, given the length
of time that nuclear power takes to plan, license and build. Therefore, despite the need for greater
action to reduce emissions through until 2030, nuclear power is unable to accelerate its
deployment—in fact, as other parts of the report illustrate, more units might close than start up—
and further decarbonization will heavily rely on energy efficiency and renewable energy.
In the longer term, while most global models assume that a decarbonized energy sector will
include a combination of nuclear, fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage and renewables,
there are a significant number of well-respected studies that assume a nuclear- and fossil-free
energy future. These include:
Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al. 103 World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016