Shaping the nuclear energy transition: what role do disaggregated environmental taxes play?

Achieving global net-zero carbon emissions necessitates harnessing all available energy sources. Nuclear energy, with its vast potential to provide reliable, baseload electricity, is thus indispensable for a sustainable energy transition. This study provides a baseline investigation into the influence of disaggregated environmental taxation on nuclear power consumption within 16 major nuclear power-consuming countries from 1995 to 2022. Employing panel Quantiles via Moments approach, the analysis reveals the heterogeneous effects of different environmental taxes. The results indicate that taxes on energy and transport have a significant positive impact across all quantiles, while pollution tax only stimulates nuclear consumption at higher quantiles. In contrast, taxation on natural resources demonstrates an insignificant effect. These findings underscore that not all environmental taxes equally promote nuclear energy consumption, highlighting the critical need for strategic policy design. Consequently, the study urges policymakers in the sampled countries to prioritize investments in nuclear infrastructure in tandem with renewables to accelerate progress toward net-zero emissions by 2050.