Nuclear Power Unnecessary for Climate Protection—There Are More Cost-Efficient Alternatives

Claudia Kemfert, Thorsten Burandt, Karlo Hainsch, Konstantin Löffler, Pao-Yu Oei and Christian von Hirschhausen

DIW Economic Bulletin, 2017, vol. 7, issue 48, 498-506

Abstract: The world needs to continue working to protect the climate—this is generally undisputed. However, there is no agreement on which technologies should be used to decarbonize the energy sector. Many international scenarios still assume a relevant role for nuclear power in the future. However, a study by the German Institute for Economic Research shows that the Paris climate protection target— limiting global warming to below two degrees—can be achieved inexpensively without nuclear power. The results of a global energy system model indicate that no new nuclear power plants have to be built in order to meet the global climate target. It would be cheaper to use a combination of renewable energy and energy storage systems.

Keywords: Nuclear power; renewable energy; energy system model; climate policy; decarbonization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L91 L95 Q4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_ ... n_bull_2017-48-2.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwdeb:2017-48-2

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in DIW Economic Bulletin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().