More than 20 countries have signed a declaration to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050 at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
Countries including the U.S., UK, France, and Hungary signed the pledge recognising the “key role” of nuclear energy in reducing carbon emissions.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said the world cannot achieve ‘net zero’ without building new nuclear reactors.
“We are not making the argument that this is absolutely going to be the sweeping alternative to every other energy source,” Kerry cautioned during a launch ceremony at COP28.
“But … you can’t get to net-zero 2050 without some nuclear [power], just as you can’t get there without some use of carbon capture, utilization and storage.”
Global nuclear capacity currently stands at 370 gigawatts, with 31 countries running reactors. To triple that number would require significant financial investment. The document invites shareholders of the World Bank, other international financial institutions, and regional development banks to encourage the integration of nuclear energy into the lending policies of their organizations
From Europe, Kerry’s main allies at the summit were French President Emmanuel Macron and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. “Nuclear energy is back,” declared President Macron. “Nuclear energy is clean energy, I want to repeat that,” he added, explaining that it is responsible for producing around 70% of France’s electricity.
Meanwhile, nearly 50 oil and gas companies, including Exxon Mobil, signed the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter, an initiative driven by COP President and United Arab Emirates Sultan Al-Jaber, to cut operational emissions by 2050.
Yet, according to a report published on Sunday by The Guardian, Al-Jaber himself has recently questioned the need for any such reductions in the use of fossil fuels. In November, he said during an online event that there is “no science” to warrant a phase-out of fossil fuels in order to restrict global heating to 1.5°C.
Al Jaber declared that such a drastic reduction of the fossil fuels that provide most of humanity’s current energy would not allow sustainable development, “unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
When the media reported this sensible-sounding statement from the COP President, it inevitably sparked a major backlash from Kerry and other leading summit attendees. A spokesperson for COP28 assured the world that, contrary to what Al-Jaber had actually said, in fact the COP President “is clear that phasing down and out of fossil fuels is inevitable and that we must keep 1.5°C within reach. We are not sure what this story was supposedly revealing. Nothing in it is new or breaking news”. In other words, they told the world’s media: nothing to see here, move along and stay on message.
Speaking to The European Conservative, energy expert Samuel Furfari described the COP28 as “an opportunity to gauge the unbridled enthusiasm of activists for wind turbines and photovoltaic solar panels, which account for 3% of the world’s primary energy consumption, but also the level of hypocrisy of certain political leaders.”
“The record for hypocrisy,” he said, belongs to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the SPD. Scholz told the summit that his coalition government, ideologically led by the Greens, is leading the world in developing ‘clean energy’ solutions, such as “wind power, photovoltaics, electric motors, and green hydrogen”. Yet he notably omitted nuclear, the cleanest, most efficient system of energy production. The coalition government closed Germany’s last three nuclear power stations this year – a move likely to leave Germany dependent on French nuclear-derived energy.
The second prize for COP28 hypocrisy, Professor Furfari added, went to the Prime Minister of Belgium, Alexander Decroo, who, despite posing for the group photo of the leaders who called for a tripling of nuclear energy production, did not sign the declaration because “his government’s ecologist ministers could not bear the humiliation. Between now and the end of the useless [climate] conferences, other hypocrisies will emerge.”
The annual U.N. climate summit attracted more than 97,000 participants to Dubai – a record-busting turnout that was almost twice the number at last year’s COP27. It did not escape notice that many of these supposed anti-emissions warriors arrived in private jets to congregate in air-conditioned luxury in the desert state.
