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Nuclear power and renewable energy are both associated with national decarbonization

Nature Energy volume 7, pages 25–29 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 27 January 2022

The Original Article was published on 05 October 2020

arising from B. Sovacool et al. Nature Energy https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-00696-3 (2020).

In a recent article, Sovacool et al.1 use cross-sectional regression analysis to test associations between different clean energy deployment patterns and national carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution levels. The authors report that the deployment of nuclear energy does not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions, whereas renewable energy does. As a result, their article questions whether electricity generated from nuclear power displaces generation from carbon-intensive fossil fuel generation. Here we critically review the article’s claims and methods to highlight several limitations. We then perform a reanalysis using the same data sources and time periods but with both a revised cross-sectional analysis and a more statistically powerful panel data analysis to test the same empirical question: is nuclear power historically associated with reduced CO2 emissions? We find that nuclear power and renewable energy are both associated with lower per capita CO2 emissions with effects of similar magnitude and statistical significance, which invalidates the central claim of Sovacool et al.1. We further demonstrate through sensitivity analysis that this association is robust to potential omitted variables. Our empirical analysis thus confirms that nuclear power and renewable electricity alike can both contribute to decarbonization and climate mitigation objectives.

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Fig. 1: Sensitivity analysis for the effect of nuclear energy on emissions reduction.

Data availability

The data used in this analysis are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Code availability

The scripts used for the empirical analysis in this article are available from the corresponding author upon request.

References

  1. Sovacool, B. K., Patrick, S., Andy, S., Goetz, W. & Gordon, MacKerron Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power. Nat. Energy 11, 928–935 (2020).

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  2. Cinelli, C. & Hazlett, C. Making sense of sensitivity: extending omitted variable bias. J. R. Stat. Soc. B 82, 39–67 (2020).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Harrison Fell, Alex Gilbert, Jesse D. Jenkins, Matto Mildenberger.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Harrison Fell

  2. Payne Institute, Colorado School of Mines; Nuclear Innovation Alliance, Golden, CO, USA

    Alex Gilbert

  3. Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Jesse D. Jenkins

  4. Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Matto Mildenberger

Authors
  1. Harrison Fell
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  2. Alex Gilbert
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  3. Jesse D. Jenkins
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  4. Matto Mildenberger
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Contributions

The authors are listed in alphabetical order. All the authors critically read the Sovacool et al.1 article and contributed to writing this manuscript. H.F. and M.M. performed the reanalysis of the cross-sectional and panel data.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jesse D. Jenkins.

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Competing interests

J.D.J. is a consultant to Clean Air Task Force, a non-profit environmental advocacy group, a partner with DeSolve LLC, which provides consulting and analytical services for for-profit and non-profit clients including (within the past 12 months) Radia, CorPower Ocean, Eavor Technologies and Grid United, and serves on the Advisory Board for Eavor Technologies, Inc., a developer of closed-loop geothermal energy technology. A.G. is a Project Manager at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a non-profit think tank that conducts policy analysis, research and education to support nuclear power as a global solution to mitigate climate change.

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Nature Energy thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Fell, H., Gilbert, A., Jenkins, J.D. et al. Nuclear power and renewable energy are both associated with national decarbonization. Nat Energy 7, 25–29 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00964-w

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