Climate Change

Ronald Bailey | 12.11.2023 10:05 AM

Dubai, United Arab Emirates—"It's been a very good COP for nuclear energy," said Jonathan Cobb of the World Nuclear Association. He was referring to COP28, this year's United Nations summit on climate change, which had given his industry several reasons for optimism. Most notably, 22 countries—including the United States, the U.K., France, Japan, and South Korea—had issued the ministerial Declaration to Triple Nuclear Capacity by 2050.

"COP28 will be known as the nuclear COP," Australia's shadow climate minister, Ted O'Brien, declared on one panel. And America's climate envoy, former Secretary of State John Kerry, proclaimed when the declaration was announced that "you can't get to net zero in 2050 without nuclear power."

"Net zero" is the condition where the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are balanced by removal from the atmosphere—one of the targets set by the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Kerry noted that nuclear energy currently supplies a third of the world's low-carbon electricity.

This increased recognition of nuclear energy as a climate-friendly power source builds on the progress I........

© Reason.com