Nuclear Energy and the Kyoto Protocol

53 Pages·2002·0.221 MB·English

by  OECD

Nuclear Development
Nuclear Energy and the Kyoto Protocol
NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCY
ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT
ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Pursuant to Article 1 of the Convention signed in Paris on 14th December 1960, and which came
into force on 30th September 1961, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
shall promote policies designed:
− to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising standard of
living in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus to contribute to
the development of the world economy;
− to contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as non-member countries in
the process of economic development; and
− to contribute to the expansion of world trade on a multilateral, non-discriminatory basis in
accordance with international obligations.
The original Member countries of the OECD are Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France,
Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The following countries became Members
subsequently through accession at the dates indicated hereafter: Japan (28th April 1964), Finland (28th
January 1969), Australia (7th June 1971), New Zealand (29th May 1973), Mexico (18th May 1994), the
Czech Republic (21st December 1995), Hungary (7th May 1996), Poland (22nd November 1996); Korea
(12th December 1996) and the Slovak Republic (14th December 2000). The Commission of the European
Communities takes part in the work of the OECD (Article 13 of the OECD Convention).
NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCY
The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) was established on 1st February 1958 under the
name of the OEEC European Nuclear Energy Agency. It received its present designation on 20th April 1972,
when Japan became its first non-European full Member. NEA membership today consists of 28 OECD
Member countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France,
Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway,
Portugal, Republic of Korea, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and
the United States. The Commission of the European Communities also takes part in the work of the Agency.
The mission of the NEA is:
− to assist its Member countries in maintaining and further developing, through international
co-operation, the scientific, technological and legal bases required for a safe,
environmentally friendly and economical use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, as
well as
− to provide authoritative assessments and to forge common understandings on key issues, as
input to government decisions on nuclear energy policy and to broader OECD policy
analyses in areas such as energy and sustainable development.
Specific areas of competence of the NEA include safety and regulation of nuclear activities,
radioactive waste management, radiological protection, nuclear science, economic and technical analyses of
the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear law and liability, and public information. The NEA Data Bank provides nuclear
data and computer program services for participating countries.
In these and related tasks, the NEA works in close collaboration with the International Atomic
Energy Agency in Vienna, with which it has a Co-operation Agreement, as well as with other international
organisations in the nuclear field.
© OECD 2002
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book should be made to OECD Publications, 2, rue André-Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France.
FOREWORD
This publication presents key facts about nuclear energy and the Kyoto
Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It
reviews the causes and consequences of global climate change, outlines the
international framework aimed at alleviating and mitigating global climate
change and reviews the potential role of nuclear energy in this regard.
Without prejudging the policies of individual Member countries towards
nuclear energy and their national choices for addressing climate change
concerns, the goal of this book is to clarify issues related to nuclear energy and
the Kyoto Protocol. It provides data and analyses that policy makers may use to
support national decision making.
This publication is a contribution of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA)
to the OECD work on issues related to global climate change and more broadly
to sustainable development. It was prepared by the NEA Secretariat assisted by
a consultant, Leonard L. Bennett, whose contribution is gratefully
acknowledged. It has also benefited from comments and suggestions from
Member country representatives and international organisation observers in the
NEA Nuclear Development Committee. It is published under the responsibility
of the Secretary-General of the OECD.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword .............................................................................................................3
Executive Summary ............................................................................................7
1. Introduction ...............................................................................................11
2. Global warming and its consequences .......................................................13
3. Evolution of greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations
in the atmosphere........................................................................................17
4. CO emission reductions by currently operating nuclear
2
power plants ..............................................................................................19
5. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ....................25
6. The Kyoto Protocol ...................................................................................27
7. Joint implementation and the clean development mechanism ..................29
8. Emissions trading and the value of carbon ................................................35
9. Beyond 2008-2012 ....................................................................................39
10. Low-carbon emitting electricity generation options ..................................45
Appendix: Country categories under the UNFCCC ..........................................49
References..........................................................................................................51
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCC)1 adopted in 1997 calls for greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions to be reduced by 2008-2012. During the 1990s, however, global
emissions of CO increased by almost 9% in spite of a decrease by almost 32%
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in the countries with economies in transition (EITs). The latter is due to the
economic recession in these countries, and not as a result of determined GHG
mitigation efforts. In most OECD countries, CO emissions have gone up since
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1990, not down. The total emissions for all OECD countries increased by more
than 10% from 1990 to 1999.
A comprehensive analysis of GHG emissions from different electricity
generation chains shows that nuclear power is one of the least carbon intensive
generation technologies, with emissions from the full energy chain (FEC)
amounting to only about 2.5-5.7 grams of GHG (expressed as grams of
C-equivalent) per kWh of electricity produced (gC /kWh), compared to some
eq
105 to 366 gC /kWh for fossil fuel chains and 2.5-76 gC /kWh for renewable
eq eq
energy chains. Assuming that the nuclear units in operation have substituted for
modern fossil-fuelled power plants, nuclear energy today is reducing CO
2
emissions from the energy sector by more than 8% world-wide (for the
electricity sector, the reduction is about 17%).
In OECD countries, nuclear power plants have already played a major
role in lowering the amount of greenhouse gases produced by the electricity
sector over the past 40 years. Without nuclear power, OECD power plant
emissions of carbon dioxide would be about one-third higher than they are at
present. This is an annual saving of some 1 200 million tonnes of carbon
dioxide, or about 10% of total CO emissions from energy use in the OECD.
2
The Kyoto Protocol emission targets call for total annual emissions in OECD
countries to be reduced by about 700 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2008-
2012, relative to 1990 levels. If all OECD nuclear plants were to cease
operating in the coming decades, this would add 1 200 million tonnes of annual
emission reduction that would have to be achieved to meet the Kyoto targets.

1. For details on the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol see Chapters 5 and 6.
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The benefit that nuclear energy brings in terms of reducing carbon
dioxide emissions is not prohibited by the Kyoto Protocol. The construction of
new nuclear power plants will contribute to meeting the targets of those
countries that choose to continue with the nuclear option as a domestic energy
supply source.
The Kyoto Protocol does, however, incorporate conditions that
effectively exclude nuclear energy as an option for implementation under two of
the three “flexibility mechanisms” that can be used, in addition to domestic
action, by Annex I Parties2 to the UNFCCC to meet their commitments. The
three mechanisms are: projects implemented jointly (Article 6), the clean
development mechanism (CDM, Article 12), and trading of emission reduction
units (Article 17). Restrictions on nuclear energy do not apply to emission
trading.
The debate over whether nuclear energy should be permitted in, or
excluded from, the flexibility mechanisms appears to be driven by different
concepts of sustainable development, and what types of energy systems fit
within these concepts. In some views, there are no inherent features of nuclear
energy that definitively would prevent it from being a component in sustainable
energy strategies, and therefore the flexibility to continue and enlarge its
contribution in the medium and long term should be maintained. Opposing
views maintain that some specific features of nuclear energy – in particular
issues related to safety, radioactive waste disposal, and proliferation of nuclear
weapons – make its use unsustainable.
The 6th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP-6) affirmed that
it was up to the host Party to determine whether a project would contribute to its
sustainable development; thus the CDM does not deny a non-Annex I country
from deploying nuclear energy, but prevents the use of a CDM subsidy for its
deployment.
At present, the targets and flexibility mechanisms refer only to the Kyoto
Protocol compliance period (2008-2012). While the entry into force of the
Kyoto Protocol would enhance the relevance of nearly carbon-free technology
options, such as nuclear energy, the main possibility for nuclear energy to make
a significant contribution to GHG emissions reduction would be after the Kyoto
Protocol compliance period. It is in this longer term that the debate about the
possible role of nuclear energy in sustainable development will be more
important.

2. See Appendix.
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The exclusion of nuclear energy from two of the flexibility mechanisms
for the present compliance period is largely symbolic in terms of nuclear energy
development by 2012. Indeed, the number of nuclear units that might have been
ordered owing to these mechanisms is very limited. However, the debate on
nuclear energy that has led to its exclusion from the flexibility mechanisms of
the Kyoto Protocol may have negative implications for the period after 2008-
2012. It will be important that organisations such as the NEA continue to
provide authoritative and reliable information on the potential future role of
nuclear energy in strategies aiming towards mitigating or stabilising GHG
emissions from the energy sector.
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