U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.

Transcript

Laura Coates: Joining us now is Brittany Croll from USIP Climate, Environment and Conflict. She's a senior program officer. Good morning to you. How are you, Brittany?

Brittany Croll: Hi Laura, good morning. I'm doing great, thanks. How are you doing?

Laura Coates: I'm doing great. There's a lot of conversations right now, obviously, about the Trump cabinet and the incoming administration, but there's also a lot of conversations more broadly about our positioning in the globe and global energy and climate challenges. We've seen this, of course, and as the global energy demands are intensifying, you've got the urgency of addressing some of the climate shock. Talk to me a little bit about what it is you're finding. Now, there was a big report that you all came up with as well that talked about a delicate balance between promoting nuclear energy and preventing proliferation.

Brittany Croll: Yeah, so you hit the nail on the head with this really important issue. You have this kind of nexus of increasing energy demands with the need to reduce our carbon emissions in order to deal with the climate crisis. And so there are a variety of energy technologies that are available that can help us to get there. But one of the technologies that is kind of increasing in importance in the potential global energy mix is around nuclear energy. And nuclear energy has a really long history, but that history is a little bit fraught, because our perceptions around the viability of nuclear energy are often closely intertwined with concerns about nuclear security and the risks of proliferation of nuclear weapons. And so, my colleague Andrew Cheatham and I put together a piece that was looking at how we could have a "both-and" approach where we're able to pursue nuclear energy while at the same time ensuring really robust multilateral frameworks that can continue our pathway towards nonproliferation, and eventually maybe a world without nuclear weapons.

Laura Coates: So how can the U.S. balance that need for green energy sources with, obviously, the concerns over nuclear weapons?

Brittany Croll: That's right. So, U.S. leadership becomes really important in this space, and we have been a leader in both multilateral engagements as well as bilateral engagement. And continuing to demonstrate that leadership is going to be really important. Recently, we put forward a commitment to triple nuclear energy capacity, and there's bipartisan interest in being able to pursue nuclear energy in a way that ensures really robust safeguards, and again, puts us on that path towards nonproliferation to ensure that we are able to safely and effectively develop nuclear energy to meet these really emerging energy demands, and growing energy demands, as we shift towards more electrification and as we're seeing an increase in energy intensive activities, such as, you know, the use of data centers for AI. So, you know, the U.S. has a lot of equities and interests in having a strong leadership position, both, you know, domestically as well as internationally.

Laura Coates: But yet, nuclear energy is not necessarily the most viable solution for some developing countries, right?

Brittany Croll: That's right, and that's what's really important is that nuclear energy is not the solution, but it is a solution, and each country needs to think about what the right energy mix is for them to be able to both meet their energy needs and to, you know, hopefully put them on a path towards net zero. And so there's a lot of factors that come into that decision-making. You know, there's political factors, there's social factors, there's environmental factors, and regardless, you know, whatever energy source you choose, there's going to be tradeoffs associated with that. And so, it makes it really important to have both a transparent and participatory decision-making process when making choices about what that energy mix should look like to ensure that there’s, kind of, public buy-in and clarity on the direction that your that your particular country is heading.

Laura Coates: What about cooperation? I mean, are we seeing different nations cooperating with a common goal of this very thing, or are we getting a lot of resistance from one another?

Brittany Croll: Yeah. So, you know, the cooperation space is really interesting right now. So in September, in the Pact for the Future, there was kind of a recommitment to nonproliferation, which was really encouraging. We just wrapped up COP29 and, you know, at last year's COP so at COP28, there was a declaration by about 25 countries to triple nuclear capacity. At COP29, another six countries signed on to that declaration. And, you know, you're seeing, like, more conversations around how to cooperate on technology development, on capacity building. And so, there really is an interest and a need for robust cooperation. But at the same time, you're really seeing, you know, some strains in how that cooperation can work. And for me, that's what makes nuclear energy a particularly interesting topic, because I think there's the potential for maybe some unlock in some of the more contentious cooperation, you know, with, you know, maybe the U.S. and China, or even the U.S. and Russia to focus on nuclear energy cooperation that might be able to allow some unlock on some of the trickier conversations that have been happening around, kind of, the nuclear security and nonproliferation conversation. So, again, that's really why we've leaned into this "both-and" because the energy space does provide, you know, good opportunities for cooperation that can hopefully lead to some unlock on some of those, you know, more difficult types of conversations that are happening in the security space.

Laura Coates: Brittany Croll, thank you so much for joining. We'll be looking forward to seeing how all this pans out, the "both-and" approach or otherwise. Thank you so much for joining.

Brittany Croll: Thanks, Laura. I appreciate the time.