The speed and scale needed to stop climate change requires laser-like focus on evidence-based, and sometimes tough, decision-making. Recently we witnessed a welcome example of such evidence-based decision-making in Europe's energy and climate change policies, write Kirsty Gogan, Rauli Partanen and Eric Ingersoll.

Global efforts to tackle climate change are futile as long as opposition to nuclear power persists, delegates heard at the opening session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's International Conference on Climate Change and the Role of Nuclear Power. It is the Vienna-based agency's first conference on this topic.

The number of Australians who say the country should develop nuclear power in order to reduce its carbon emissions has grown over the past eight years and now stands at just over 50%, according to a poll by Roy Morgan, the country's longest established market research company.

Delegates at a plenary session of Russian Energy Week taking place this week in Moscow discussed how nuclear power is an "inalienable element of the sustainable development agenda". The session, which was hosted by Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, included panellists from Belarus, Egypt, Hungary and the UAE, as well as from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Uzbekistan's preparations to build its first nuclear power plant are gathering pace with a sense of making up for lost time. The Central Asian country became a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency as long ago as 1994, has 50 years of experience in nuclear research and is the world's fifth biggest producer of uranium.

A Puerto Rican-led not-for-profit organisation is to begin a feasibility study of small modular reactors and microcreactors for the island after receiving support from the US Department of Energy.

Units 1 and 2 of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant in eastern France will permanently shut down in February and June 2020, respectively, Secretary of State for Ecological and Solidarity Transition Emmanuelle Wargon said yesterday. Their closure had previously been set to coincide with the start-up of the Flamanville EPR, which has now been delayed until possibly the end of 2022.

Foratom has welcomed the European Council's decision to remain technology neutral in its strategy on financing sustainable growth and the transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient economy, but it urges the European Commission to establish a group with expertise in nuclear life-cycle technologies to advise on its EU-wide classification system, or 'taxonomy', the implementation of which has been postponed by two years.

As world leaders meet at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York this week, and the World Meteorological Organisation and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change publish new reports, Agneta Rising, director general of World Nuclear Association, stresses that nuclear power is the "unsung hero" in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

The Australian Workers Union has told a federal government roundtable event that it supports the lifting of the country's ban on nuclear energy. The union is nation's oldest and largest 'blue-collar' trade union, having more than 100,000 members.
 

The power sector supports the European Commission's goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the EU economy by 2050, the association of European electricity generators, Eurelectric, said. However, it has called for six "critical enablers" to be put in place to achieve this.

Energy ministers from across Central Asia today committed their countries to collaborating on meeting the United Nations' seventh Sustainable Development Goal, which pledges 'affordable and clean energy' by 2030. The meeting is the first time they have come together to discuss the region's common energy challenges.