Nuclear power plays an “important role” in achieving the climate targets, representatives from 20 states agree. France says that global generation capacity must triple to carbon neutrality.
A two-day conference on nuclear energy ended in Paris on Friday. Organized by the French Ministry of Energy and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), an intergovernmental institution within the OECD, the delegations of 20 states in a joint declaration underlined the “important role” that nuclear energy is already playing today for achieving the climate targets and that could become even greater with a view to the 1.5 degree target. “This ambitious goal can be achieved by continuing existing nuclear power plants under the highest safety standards and the large-scale construction of new nuclear power plants,” says the declaration, which, alongside EU states such as France, Poland and the Netherlands, the USA, Great Britain and Japan, among others. Germany is not one of them.
In addition to greater energy efficiency, the maximum use of all emission-free and low-emission energy sources, including nuclear energy and renewable energies, is needed to create energy security and prosperity, the declaration continues. Nuclear energy, which covers around 10 percent of global electricity consumption, is safe, affordable and available, and it creates jobs and growth. The states committed themselves to promoting cooperation in the regulation, improvement of supply chains, waste disposal, financing and research and development of new types of reactors.
“Ediate treating core energy and renewable energy”
“It is the first time in 13 years that so many high-ranking delegates are attending an event of the (NEA)," said France’s Minister of Energy, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, satisfied. The global capacity to generate nuclear energy must triple by 2050 in order to become CO2-neutral, she said in an interview with the newspaper “Les Echos” on the basis of figures from the OECD institution – and stressed that in addition to the recently established Alliance for Nuclear Energy within the EU, which includes 14 member states, other states are taking up this challenge.
The conference in Paris is also an answer to Russia, which continues to provide nuclear solutions through developing countries to offer nuclear solutions. With a view to the 14-state alliance, she stressed that it was about “building an agenda for the next European Commission”, which in particular supports the reactivation of the Euratom Treaty and the commitment to treat nuclear energy and renewable energies in all European texts. The French EU Commissioner for the EU Thierry Breton recently advocated that nuclear energy be supported by the European Investment Bank.