The topic of the moment at the ongoing Climate Action Week in London is to get ready for the next global climate summit in Belem, Brazil. But it is happening at a time when the climate change agenda has slipped markedly under the radar.
One speaker said it was like living in a “good news, bad news” world. The radical optimists are still to be found, but the naysayers who foresee a future of a lemming-like collapse from the cliff are in stronger voice.
The US strikes on Iran over the weekend represent a radical moment not just for the global political balance, but also the environmental movement, which has an uneasy relationship with nuclear power. Its emotional heart is not in favour of atomic energy, but administrators who need to deliver on net-zero goals by the mid-century see no alternative.
The B2 bombers that carried out the raids on Iran’s Fordow were clearly running the risk of contamination from the nuclear facility. So far, the reporting from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear body, is that there have been no leaks that would pose a danger to the region. The area may be mountainous and arid, but it is close to multiple countries and thus the ultimate threats exist far wider afield than just in the host nation.
Iran has invested much of its resources in mastering atomic technology. Decades of underground research and the building of refining facilities have come about despite the international community expressing doubts over the programme. The IAEA has been the principal forum in which this contested activity was carried out, with reference regularly to the UN Security Council, and now finally culminating in a bombing intervention by the US.
I say “finally”, but there is no certainty that the raid will cap Iran’s nuclear programme. This is even as Israeli officials claimed over the weekend that the war they have waged, combined with Washington’s intervention, has set Tehran several years back from weaponisation of this programme.
What is the link between climate change and Iran’s nuclear programme, you may ask. The short answer is that the climate change agenda could have taken Iran down a different path. Because around the world, there is more and more investment in nuclear capability. As mentioned above, it is crucial to net-zero goals.
There is no denying that Iran meets several metrics for how a nation can benefit from nuclear energy. It is a vast country with a rapidly expanding population that has great manufacturing potential. As it asserts, it has the right under international law to develop an indigenous nuclear programme. And yet, in failing to recognise the wider political context of its claims, it has lost sight of its own national needs for clean and sustainable energy output.
Tim Gould, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (which is not affiliated with the IAEA), told the City of London’s Net Zero Delivery Summit on Monday that nuclear energy was at the heart of a new age of electricity. Power generation is needed to meet an increasing share of the world’s rising demand.
One of the components of this push for more electricity directly stems from climate change and rising global temperatures. Mr Gould says there is more demand for electricity for cooling systems so that humans can live normally in the changed climate.
Iran is one of the countries bearing the brunt of this trend. For a country like Iran, electricity offers the “most readily available” set of advantages, ranging from falling costs to more efficient clean technologies. Worldwide, despite the headlines around countries like India returning to coal generation, more than 80 per cent of new electricity capacity is coming from low-emission sources.
Mr Gould makes the point that countries also like to have homegrown energy security, which can be derived from renewables.
Energy transition is vital to the future of the Earth. It is essential for us to survive and make our habitats more liveable. And contamination in any part of the planet from a nuclear facility that is in the middle of a confrontation amounts to the greatest failure to meet the challenge of climate change.
But even at this moment, with the brink of disaster in front of us, there is progress being reported. According to Mr Gould, the Cop28 goal that was announced by the UAE presidency of tripling renewable energy is being met. With innovation like carbon capture and storage, there is an opportunity to increase energy efficiency and to line up enough capital to back big-ticket sustainable energy systems, including nuclear.
That is where the global agenda is really at, with just months to go before Brazil hosts the next UN climate summit. It is, therefore, important that progress not be blown off course by cataclysm in the Middle East.
Seen through the lens of climate change, it is clear how badly Iran fell short in its nuclear adventure. It is just as hard to know when it will start back on the international path.
