Author: Kiersten Sundell
If you see Generation Atomic content often, you may have seen more of us at COP28 than the formal policy negotiations that took place between nearly 200 countries. Let’s talk about the policy outcomes of COP, and what they mean for the future of clean power.
To start off, nuclear energy made history at this year’s COP, with advocates and delegates alike calling it the “nuclear COP.” Why is this? Well for the first time ever, all 198 member nations of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) called for accelerating the deployment of nuclear energy in the final written agreement of COP, which is known as the Global Stocktake.
The Global Stocktake is essentially a report card to assess where the world stands on achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and what we can do to fast-track climate action. Heated debates took place in the final negotiation hours of COP, with the majority of the discussion revolving around the best way to replace our fossil fuel-dependent global economy with renewables.
At this stage in past U.N. climate debates, nuclear has been overlooked in favor of wind and solar and excluded from the final published agreement. But thanks to the growing momentum in the nuclear movement, it looks like the world finally realized the need for reliable and clean baseload power by formally recognizing nuclear power as vital in achieving rapid decarbonization.
Advocacy organizations played a huge part in this, as did the International Atomic Energy Agency, and of course the pledge from 25 countries to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
As stated by IAEA Director General Grossi, “Nuclear energy‘s inclusion in the Global Stocktake is nothing short of a historic milestone and a reflection of how much perspectives have changed.”
Stay tuned as we cover more of what went down at COP this year, and join us in holding nations accountable for the climate promises they made while there. Visit our TikTok page to see the full COP28 policy video!
