From providing clean energy to protecting water resources and developing smarter agriculture, nuclear science and technology can make a significant contribution to mitigating, monitoring and adapting to the impacts of climate change. This is what the IAEA and partners demonstrated in a series of side events throughout the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
The IAEA-led event space #Atoms4Climate – the first ever pavilion at a COP dedicated to the applications of nuclear science and technology – featured more than 40 events, all of which were livestreamed.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi officially opened the #Atoms4Climate pavilion on Wednesday, 9 November, at an event that brought together high level representatives from governments, international organizations, industry and civil society. The speakers included Matthew Opoku Prempeh, Ghana’s Minister of Energy; Kathryn Huff, US Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy; Cecilia Nicolini, State Secretary of Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Innovation from Argentina; Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO); Maria Helena Semedo, Deputy Director General of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); and others.
Mr Grossi’s message to leaders at COP was that nuclear science and technology are part of the solution to both mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change impacts. “Nuclear is here. Nuclear is already part of the solution, and nuclear will continue to be in this path,” he said.
The Director General participated in numerous events organized in the framework of COP27. On 9 November, he talked about the issues of peace, non-proliferation, climate change and energy security with William Kennedy, a senior executive editor at Bloomberg News. On the same day, he interviewed Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), and then led a panel to exchange opinions on the role of nuclear energy in achieving net zero emissions.
