RE100 has no plan to include nuclear power: energy director

Taipei, July 3 (CNA) The energy director of RE100 said at a forum in Taipei on Wednesday that the initiative will not allow companies to use nuclear power, but a country "may decide that it needs nuclear power or other energy sources to ensure a diverse supply of electricity" in order to retire fossil fuel.

Sam Kimmins, the director of energy of the Climate Group, an international nonprofit which co-launched RE100, told a climate change forum in Taipei that the group is often asked whether it will consider nuclear power as a source of renewable electricity as defined by RE100, but "the answer is no."

RE100 is a global corporate renewable energy initiative calling for businesses to commit to 100 percent renewable electricity and counts 33 Taiwanese companies including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) among its members.

"RE100 is a renewable electricity campaign; it's about 100 percent renewable electricity for companies and the RE 100 target will always be about 100 percent renewable electricity," Kimmins said.

However, RE100's insistence on no-nuclear "is only part of the picture because you also need to balance the grid of an entire country," he added.

As such, while TSMC or other Taiwanese RE100 members may be powered by 100 percent renewable electricity, helping to drive investment in renewable power sources, "the country may decide that it needs nuclear or other sources to ensure that there is a diverse supply of electricity" to drive down fossil fuel use, he said.

"The two are not mutually exclusive," Kimmins stressed.

The Climate Group's view on nuclear power is clear, he continued. "We would rather that economies, given the choice, would retire their fossil fuel plant rather than their nuclear plant."

He argued that if the country has "a choice of a carbon free option or a very fossil fuel intensive option," one should "keep the carbon free option for existing power."

However, Kimmins said it is a more complex story when it comes to "new nuclear," meaning building new nuclear power plants. "It's a choice the government needs to make and we're not going to second guess that choice."

What one has to remember, he said, is that nuclear is expensive and takes a long time to build, taking about 15 to 20 years for a new nuclear power station.

During the intervening period of construction, "if we're going to achieve 2040, or 2050, [net-zero] targets, we need to invest heavily in renewable electricity [as] we know that renewable electricity works," the RE 100 director stressed.

Taiwan's current Democratic Progressive Party government has a "nuclear-free homeland" policy, which has recently been much debated due to the expected increase in energy use in the artificial intelligence (AI) era.

Electronics maker Pegatron Corp. Chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), who was recently appointed by President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) as deputy convener of a newly established climate committee, last week called for Taiwan's energy mix to consist of 30 percent renewable energy and 30 percent nuclear power.