Sovacool, Benjamin K, Schmid, Patrick, Stirling, Andy, Walter, Goetz and MacKerron, Gordon (2020) Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power. Nature Energy, 5. pp. 928-935. ISSN 2058-7546

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	University of Sussex Business School > SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit
SWORD Depositor:	Mx Elements Account
Depositing User:	Mx Elements Account
Date Deposited:	12 Oct 2020 07:31
Last Modified:	04 May 2023 13:09
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/94288

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