This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on January 15, 2024 - January 21, 2024

World leaders gathered in Dubai from Nov 30 to Dec 12 last year on a common and urgent mission to curb climate change, striving to prevent it from further escalating into a climate emergency.

The 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — an international environmental treaty addressing climate change — brought together its signatories to discuss the climate crisis on a global level.

In addition to world leaders and politicians, experts and stakeholder groups shared experiences and insights and offered recommendations and action plans towards achieving the important objective of keeping global warming to within 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels — as per the Paris Agreement, which was adopted at COP21 in 2015.

COP28 was hosted by the UAE, with its Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is the UAE’s special envoy for climate change, serving as president-designate.

The hosting of COP28 by the UAE marks an important milestone for nuclear energy’s role in climate change solutions. Last November, the UAE’s Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) granted the operating licence for its fourth and final nuclear reactor to the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant. The licence, awarded for 60 years, authorises the Nawah Energy Company to commission and operate the unit.

The licensing of the fourth plant was a historic moment for the UAE, marking the realisation of its vision started 15 years ago to develop the first peaceful nuclear energy programme in the Arab region.

UAE’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and deputy chairman of the board of management of the FANR Hamad Al Kaabi had announced that the UAE Nuclear Programme would play a key role in providing 25% of the country’s clean energy, hence, supporting the UAE government’s efforts to achieve its 2050 Net Zero Goals.

Sultan has called on governments, industry and all stakeholders to “disrupt business as usual” and take decisive action to tackle the climate crisis in the world’s pursuit to achieve game-changing results in this area.

Sultan drew attention to the urgent need to mobilise trillions, not billions, of dollars if the world is to reach its climate, biodiversity and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets. Massive global investments are needed to reduce emissions, for which a major shift is needed to harness public and, especially, private financing for climate action. The urgency is for both the public and private sectors to finance all components of the energy transition, including the scaling of clean energy and the managed phase-out of fossil fuels on an accelerated time frame, the Green Future publication reports.

Among key prescriptions for success are the use of innovative financing instruments to scale up private investment in emerging and developing economies.

The use of nuclear energy as part of an urgent and key solution to mitigate the devastating impacts of climate change has gained traction among world leaders.

COP28 marks a critical turning point for the nuclear industry, shifting its reputation from a controversial energy source to being considered part of the key solutions to reach net zero goals, and from a taboo subject to being recognised as an urgent solution to mitigate climate change, preventing it from escalating further into a climate crisis leading to the destruction of land, sea, environment, people, animals and plants.

Nuclear energy was among the key topics taking centre stage at COP28 that made world headlines.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi delivered the agency’s inaugural statement on nuclear power at a COP28 event. The landmark statement, supported by dozens of countries at COP28, underscores the view that the world needs nuclear power to fight climate change and that action should be taken to expand the use of this clean energy source and help build “a low carbon bridge” to the future.

At COP28, leaders from 22 countries pledged to cooperate in the plans to triple the current installed nuclear capacity by 2050 and called for multilateral development banks (MDBs) to include nuclear energy in their financing policies.

In line with the call by world leaders for MDBs to include nuclear energy in their financing portfolios under environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles, it is timely for MDBs to consider including nuclear energy not only as a key imperative of ESG but also to take into consideration the strategic and significant contribution of nuclear energy for development in particular in developing countries.

Former US president Dwight Eisenhower, who was concerned about the escalating nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union in the mid-20th century, delivered his “Atoms for Peace” speech at the UN General Assembly on Dec 8, 1953, setting the direction for the shift of nuclear applications towards peaceful uses through cooperation and sharing of information and knowledge. This speech inspired the creation of the IAEA in 1957 to promote the application of nuclear science and technology “for the benefit of all mankind”.

In 2015, on a visit to Malaysia, the then director-general of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, said: “Our mandate has been summarised as ‘Atoms for Peace’, which was the title of a famous speech by President Eisenhower in 1953, in which he proposed the creation of the IAEA. I believe we could now expand that to ‘Atoms for Peace and Development’.”

This is timely as countries receiving support from the IAEA and other countries in nuclear applications have witnessed significant development in their countries. An outstanding example is South Korea.

Amano’s statement underlines the IAEA’s role in global development. Additionally, the IAEA helps countries to achieve the SDGs in energy, food and agriculture, industry, water management and health. It is in this context that MDBs should consider including nuclear energy in their financing portfolio, not only for ESG objectives but also equally importantly, to support the SDGs of countries.

Sheriffah Noor Khamseah Al-Idid Syed Ahmad Idid is an innovation and nuclear advocate

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