2023-12-02 08:55:02
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 42 minutes ago, Updated 39 minutes ago
Participants pose for a photo during the session on tripling nuclear energy by 2050 at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, December 2, 2023. LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
The announcement was made by John Kerry, the US climate envoy, in Dubai, alongside several leaders including Emmanuel Macron and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo.
Around twenty countries including the United States, France and the United Arab Emirates called this Saturday, December 2, in a joint declaration at COP28, to triple the capacities of nuclear energy in the world by 2050, by compared to 2020. The objective? Reducing dependence on coal and gas, the major challenge of this COP.
The announcement was made by John Kerry, the US climate envoy, in Dubai, along with several leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croco. But China and Russia, major builders of nuclear power plants in the world today, are not among the signatories.
“Carbon neutrality”
These include Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Ghana, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine, Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. “The declaration recognizes the key role of nuclear energy in achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and to keep the goal of (limiting warming to) 1.5°C within reach», indicates the text.
«We know from science, the reality of facts and evidence that we cannot achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 without nuclear power.“, said John Ferry during the event in Dubai. Romanian President Clausus Johannites explained that nuclear power represented for his country “a stable source of energy contributing to energy security and decarbonization».
Risk of accident
The signatory countries also call on shareholders of international financial institutions – such as the World Bank – to include nuclear power in their financing. “There are statutory provisions, sometimes in certain international credit institutions, which exclude nuclear power. I think this is completely obsolete.», Declared a little earlier to AFP the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi.
Its promoters see nuclear energy, which is modular and emits almost no greenhouse gases, as an incomparable means of producing virtuous and abundant electricity. Some environmental defenders, on the other hand, underline the risks of accidents, the question of waste in the very long term or even the high costs of nuclear power.
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