Nuclear Industry Association Response to HM Treasury’s ‘UK Green Taxonomy’ consultation

The NIA is the trade association and representative body for the civil nuclear industry in the UK. We represent more than 300 companies operating across all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including the current and prospective operators of nuclear power stations, international designers, and vendors of nuclear power stations, and those engaged in decommissioning, waste management and nuclear liabilities management. Members also include nuclear equipment suppliers, engineering and construction firms, nuclear research organisations, and legal, financial and consultancy companies.
Due to the diversity of our membership, our views in this submission will cover high-level, industrywide matters. Our members may choose to make their own detailed submissions.

Executive Summary

We support the development of a UK Green Taxonomy to promote market integrity and mobilise capital into sectors critical for the green transition. We strongly welcome the government’s proposal to classify nuclear as green in any future UK Green Taxonomy.

We have spoken with many leading lending banks, who have observed that UK policy on nuclear financing requires greater alignment with the Government’s energy policies which commit to increasing nuclear power deployment. There is growing interest across the private market in financing nuclear power projects, with investors being drawn to the prospect of diversifying their portfolios of sustainable infrastructure projects.

Nuclear energy is a clean, sustainable energy source and is integral to the green transition. It is estimated that the current fleet has reduced the UK’s carbon emissions by 1.1 billion tons CO2 eq. between 1976 and 2024. This is equivalent to over 16 years of UK car emissions.

Please click here to view our response.

Further Information

The NIA is happy to provide more context, or any clarifications desired on the content of our response and to ask our members where appropriate for additional information that may be useful.

Please contact Elisabeth Roden, Policy Analyst for the Nuclear Industry Association, at [email protected] to do this.