Also in this episode - you can listen using the link above - Thomas Lamb from Myriad Uranium talks about the Copper Mountain project, the general outlook for future uranium demand and supply, and the potential benefits of artificial intelligence.
Here's an edited transcript of Jonathan Cobb's COP30 interview:
What was agreed at COP30 - and what wasn't?
The new text calls for efforts to triple adaptation finance. This has been a focus of COPs in recent years, where countries are focusing on receiving finance to adapt to the impacts of climate change, rather than actually taking action to mitigate climate change. But even on this, there's been some stepping back. In the new agreement, deadlines have been pushed back from 2030 to 2035. One of the major absences in the presidency agreement was any statement on fossil fuels. A large group of countries had pushed very forcefully for there to be some text on pushing forward the agenda on fossil fuels, on phasing down, reducing, the amount of fossil fuels used. This has been a sticking point for COPs for some time. This was a COP held in the Amazon and while a fund for future forests was announced early on in the COP process, this was a voluntary measure and it didn't attract all the funding that it might have. There was also controversy over the final process of gavelling through the many sub-agreements that had been negotiated over the two weeks. All that said, there was an overall positive attitude, defending and celebrating the Paris Agreement. This is an agreement that's now 10 years old which aims to keep the global increase in temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius. At the same time, many countries were late in their submissions of nationally determined contribution documents, NDCs, which set out national policies aimed at tackling climate change. Overall, I think there is a question of how much more COPs can agree in the current format, and seeing how that's going to work going forward will be one of the main questions for the COP process.
What did the COP talks have to say about nuclear energy?
With the focus on adaptation and greater efforts on protecting forests, and the failure to get any substantive texts on roadmaps away from fossil fuels, there was little in the decision documents themselves emerging from COP30 that had much impact on energy, let alone nuclear energy in particular. But to an extent, nuclear energy is now embedded into the COP process, following its inclusion in the Global Stocktake Outcome document that was agreed at COP28. That document did recognise the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and critically, it acknowledged nuclear energy as one of the technologies that countries could accelerate to achieve that goal. That decision was recognised in a number of the nationally determined contribution submissions.
How significant are nationally determined contributions - NDCs?
These are submissions made by governments setting out how they plan to take action, in this case through to 2035, to tackle climate change so that their national policies and ambitions are in line with the goals set in the Paris Agreement. While the proposals within the NDCs submitted for COP30 would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they wouldn't be sufficient to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, so further action is necessary. It's estimated that the actions that have been proposed would help limit temperatures to a rise of around 2.6 degrees Celsius instead of that 2 degree or 1.5 degree target set out in the Paris Agreements. Overall, despite the fact that a third of countries have yet to submit their latest NDCs, the number of submissions including nuclear as part of their plans has increased in this NDC cycle, with 12 individual nations and the collective NDC of the European Union - representing 27 nations - making positive reference to nuclear energy. And we can expect that number to grow when countries that have previously supported nuclear but have yet to make their submissions, for example India, do make their final submissions.
What else was achieved at COP 30 for nuclear?
One very welcome development was that both Rwanda and Senegal announced that they were joining the declaration to triple nuclear capacity, bringing the number of nations endorsing the goal of at least a global tripling of nuclear energy by 2050 to 33. The joining of the two countries was announced at a joint World Nuclear Association-UK government event at the UK's own National Pavilion. Rwanda and Senegal joining is important, not just to build the tripling declaration coalition itself, but also to strengthen the coalition of countries at COP when energy issues are being discussed, to ensure that nuclear-supporting countries are present in all the different regional groups debating climate action. We also saw two new financial institutions, Stifel and CIBC, sign up to the financial statement of support. And Equinix, Fermi America and Circularity joined the large energy users pledge. On top of that, Kazatomprom, which is the world's largest uranium producer, and Nuclearia Energy signed up to the nuclear industry tripling pledge. World Nuclear Association had its own pavilion at COP, representing the global nuclear industry. We held events there, as well as engaging with the many delegates that visited the pavilion. But we also participated in a number of events at the International Atomic Energy Agency's pavilion, as well as events at the Nuclear for Climate and the International Youth Nuclear Congress stands. And as we mentioned, we had a special event at the UK pavilion, as well as holding our own side events.
How did COP30 feel compared with COP29 and COP28?
A lot depends on where we are in the COP process. So governments are at the stage of proposing their NDCs and there's now a process over a couple of years of assessing them, and then there will be a similar global stocktake to that which took place at COP28 in Dubai. And that will be of particular interest to us because that global stocktake was where nuclear was first mentioned in an official UNFCCC document in a positive way. But more generally, it will be making an assessment, a more detailed assessment of the strength of the NDCs that have been proposed and what more needs to be done. I think also that something which changed the tone of the event was the fact that the high-level segment at the very beginning, where prime ministers and other senior members of government attend the COP, was shifted to the week before. So there was much coverage of visits by prime ministers, but also the Prince of Wales was presenting events at Sao Paulo and there were events taking place in Rio de Janeiro. To an extent, that took some of the focus off the COP itself, because previously what's happened at COPs is that that high-level segment forms part of the first three days of the COP. And with that additional high-level representation, it brings more media focus to what's taking place at the COP itself. It'll be interesting to see whether, going ahead towards COP31, they decide to keep that model or whether that high-level segment is brought back into the main body of the COP negotiations itself.
What can we look forward to at next year's COP?
COP31 is going to be held in Turkey, a really interesting location for nuclear energy, with Turkey's first nuclear reactor nearing completion and plans in place to expand nuclear generation capacity further. So when we arrive in Turkey, I think there's going to be a lot to focus on in terms of the role of nuclear energy in new nuclear countries, like Turkey, and how it can also play a role elsewhere. As for the negotiations overall, I think there's a lot of pressure building for the COP meetings to demonstrate that they can make tangible process, not just on adapting to the impacts of climate change, but also returning to the fundamentals of accelerating progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions themselves.
Is there a particular deadline for NDCs or is it a moveable feast?
It certainly has been a moveable feast in terms of submitting the NDC documents. They were actually meant to be submitted much earlier this year, so the UNFCCC Secretariat would have time to assess them and come out with a fuller and comprehensive assessment of what kind of impact on climate change the proposed NDCs would have. They've had to make a partial assessment based on only around two-thirds of the NDCs being submitted. So all those countries yet to submit NDCs have got to do so. And then that will then lead into the process, culminating at COP33 to be held in 2028, where those NDCs will be assessed and the global stocktake document will be agreed, the second global stocktake, setting out agreed actions that should be taken to address climate change.
Do we know where COP33 is going to be held?
We know it's going to be held somewhere in the Southeast Asia region - the COPs move around from region to region. I think it's a good thing they do as it gives them different perspectives, different focuses of different regions. India has indicated that they would like to host the COP. That's not confirmed yet, but that is an initial offer. Another interesting location will be the one that has been agreed already for COP32, which is to be held in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. And that's the first time that a least developed country, as termed by the COP process, will have been the host of a COP.
Key links to find out more:
World Nuclear News Podcast
COP30
Myriad Uranium
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Sign up to the World Nuclear News daily or weekly news round-ups
Contact info:
alex.hunt@world-nuclear.org
Episode credit: Presenter Alex Hunt. Co-produced and mixed by Pixelkisser Production
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