Neither Climate Nor Jobs

In February 2021, in the grip of climate-induced extreme weather, energy infrastructure in Texas failed, leaving millions without power.

Drawing on the ‘disaster capitalism’ playbook, many have attempted to use this incident to argue that our energy futures cannot depend on renewable sources, and that a transition to low emissions society would require nuclear power.

This brief publication revisits the evidence to demonstrate that on any metric – reliability, emission reductions, costs, jobs and economic impact – nuclear is inferior to renewables.

The evidence shows, moreover, that a continuing insistence on nuclear will be detrimental to our ability to power a Just Transition: while the few jobs it creates are primarily for the highly skilled, its enormous costs will likely result in austerity policies.