Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power

Two of the most widely emphasized contenders for carbon emissions reduction in the electricity sector are nuclear power and renewable energy. While scenarios regularly question the potential impacts of adoption of various technology mixes in the future, it is less clear which technology has been ass...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature energy 2020-11, Vol.5 (11), p.928-935
Main Authors: Sovacool, Benjamin K., Schmid, Patrick, Stirling, Andy, Walter, Goetz, MacKerron, Gordon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
4014/4005
704/106/694/682
Accessories
Analysis
Carbon
Decarbonization
Economics and Management
Electric power generation
Electricity
Emission analysis
Emissions
Emissions control
Energy
Energy Policy
Energy Storage
Energy Systems
Multiple regression analysis
Nuclear energy
Renewable and Green Energy
Renewable energy
Renewable resources
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Summary:Two of the most widely emphasized contenders for carbon emissions reduction in the electricity sector are nuclear power and renewable energy. While scenarios regularly question the potential impacts of adoption of various technology mixes in the future, it is less clear which technology has been associated with greater historical emission reductions. Here, we use multiple regression analyses on global datasets of national carbon emissions and renewable and nuclear electricity production across 123 countries over 25 years to examine systematically patterns in how countries variously using nuclear power and renewables contrastingly show higher or lower carbon emissions. We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do. We also find a negative association between the scales of national nuclear and renewables attachments. This suggests nuclear and renewables attachments tend to crowd each other out. Nuclear and renewable energy are considered two of the most important technologies towards decarbonization though it is not clear how their adoption relates to national emission reductions. Sovacool et al. look at data from 123 countries to examine emission reductions associated with nuclear- or renewable energy-focused strategies.
ISSN:2058-7546
2058-7546
DOI:10.1038/s41560-020-00696-3