Despite nuclear energy’s potentially critical role in supporting the deep decarbonisation of the global economy, it is more commonly excluded from climate finance taxonomies, or the taxonomies are ambiguous on the issue, researchers said on Thursday (6 July).

This means that whether nuclear energy is considered green and sustainable or not varies widely across regions and institutions.

None of the world’s 30 major banks have explicitly included nuclear energy in their criteria for issuing green or sustainability-linked bonds, despite an EU decision last year to label it as sustainable, according to analysis by Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.