Abstract

The majority of the World’s countries have committed to reduce significantly their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through replacing fossil energy by low-carbon sources and electrification of major economy sectors. However, different strategies have been adopted to achieve this goal. Germany, for example, decided to phase-out nuclear power and to increase drastically the share of renewable sources, primarily wind and photovoltaics. At the same time, a considerable number of countries, including those neighbouring Germany, continues to consider nuclear energy as an import part of their current and future energy mix. France is an example of a country which sees nuclear energy as the main source of electricity. This presentation will discuss a potential contribution of nuclear power to Climate Change mitigation. The current status of nuclear power in the World will be briefly presented. As a case study, the presentation will show a comparison of electricity sectors in Germany and France, the two largest economies in the EU, in terms of installed generation capacities, actual power generation, capacity factors, total GHG emissions, etc. The comparison reveals that despite a heavy penetration of the renewable sources, the GHG intensity in Germany is by hundreds percent higher than in France.