IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi emphasized the importance of nuclear energy in helping countries reach their net zero goals in a panel with members of the renewable energy community at the International Vienna Energy and Climate Forum on 2 November 2023. The Director General shared the stage with the CEO of Sustainable Energy for All and Special Representative of the Secretary General, United Nations, Damilola Ogunbiyi, and the Executive Director of Student Energy, Helen Watts at Vienna’s historic Hofburg Palace.
Mr Grossi noted that in Europe, where the Forum was being held, half of the clean energy produced was from nuclear.
“Nuclear energy is currently one of the most efficient and important producers of clean energy … This is not a ‘possibility’ or a goal to be achieved in the future. It is happening right now as we speak,” Mr Grossi said. He added that there is an increasing awareness about integrating nuclear energy in “intelligent partnerships with renewable energies, with hydro and with other forms of energy.”
Co-organized by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the Austrian Government and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Forum aims to bring clean energy stakeholders together to accelerate the progress of the global energy transition to meet net zero goals.
Net zero means reducing energy sector carbon emissions to zero by around the middle of the century in order to limit the increase in global average temperatures to under 2°C above pre-industrial levels, as pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Mr Grossi highlighted the availability of practical solutions for this “existential [climate] problem,” saying that nuclear science and technology is already here and benefiting the world: “We need to go to the toolbox and take the tools that are available to us; look at the facts, use the solutions we have, and integrate them in an intelligent way.”
