Today is Blog Action Day '09, over 13,000 bloggers will be posting their thoughts on climate change. It comes less than two months before the next big UNFCCC meeting in Copenhagen, where delegates are due to agree the climate change agreement that will build on the first five years of the Kyoto Protocol.
The Copenhagen meeting will be a barometer, showing whether the international community is prepared to make an effective commitment to tackling the greatest environmental threat to the planet. Nuclear generation is already making a major contribution to tackling climate change, and can make a much bigger contribution in the future.
Global nuclear generation helps avoid over 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year. Without nuclear power greenhouse gas emissions from the power generation sector would rise by over 20%. To put this into context, global nuclear generation today avoids four times more greenhouse gas emissions reductions than will be achieved if developed countries abide by their Kyoto Protocol emissions targets.
Nuclear power is increasingly being seen as vital to any long term plan to bring greenhouse gas emissions to a safe level whilst still bringing reliable electricity supplies still so desperately needed by many billions of people in the world today and the billions more that will be born this century. The WNA's Nuclear Century Outlook provides one vision of how these essential twin needs could be met.
The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook foresees a "much faster roll-out of renewables and nuclear - and urgent investment in carbon capture and storage" as part of its projection of what is needed to achieve a stabilisation at 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere, a level some feel is still too high to avoid unacceptable levels of climate change. Nuclear generation would increase from the current 370 GWe capacity to around 700 GWe by 2030.
China and India are embarking on ambitious nuclear energy programmes, showing a commitment to keep their greenhouse gas emissions low even as their economies expand. China plans to build between 120-160 GWe of nuclear generation capacity by 2030. The Indian Prime Minister has recently set a target of 470 GWe of nuclear generation capacity by 2050. South Korea will add 15 GWe of new capacity over the next 12 years.
Across the north of Africa, through the Middle East through to the tiger economies of Asia nuclear energy is being planned to supply both electricity and clean water. New nuclear build is a key element of plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide energy security in North America.
In Europe nuclear generation currently provides around 28% of electricity, only recently did it lose its role of having the largest share of generation to coal. But Europe's concerns over climate change and over-dependance on gas could see that reversed. Belgium and Germany are in the process of reversing their nuclear phase-out policies. Sweden has scrapped its phase-out policy and now plans new nuclear build, as does Italy. The UK is in the early stages of a major new nuclear build programme for the next two decades.
If the world is going to be successful in tackling climate change clean low carbon energy will be needed not only for conventional electricity generation but also for industrial heat, hydrogen production, powering cars and providing clean water. Meeting that demand with nuclear energy, with renewables and potentially fossil fuel power plants with CCS will be incredibly challenging. But it is a challenge we must rise to and achieve.