FOURTEEN of the world’s largest banks and financial institutions are to pledge their support for the development of more nuclear energy, said the Financial Times.
Banks including Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will at an event on Monday with White House climate policy adviser John Podesta support goals set out at the COP28 climate negotiations last year to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
“This event is going to be a game-changer,” George Borovas, head of the nuclear practice at law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth and a board member of the World Nuclear Association told the Financial Times.
“Until now, he said, banks had found it politically difficult to support new nuclear projects, which often required sign-off from the chief executive’s office,” he said.
“Banks at their senior management level would just say, we don’t understand anything about nuclear. We just know it’s very difficult, very controversial,” said Borovas. He added that the support from the banks would help normalise nuclear energy as “part of the solution for climate change” rather than “a necessary evil”.
Banks could support new plants by increasing direct lending and project finance to nuclear companies, arranging bond sales or introducing companies to private equity or credit funds, said the Financial Times.
BNP told the Financial Times there was “no scenario” in which the world could hit carbon neutrality by 2050 without nuclear power, citing the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Barclays said it was taking part because nuclear could be a solution to the intermittency of wind and solar energy.
