In his State of the Union address this week, President Obama re-emphasized his Administration's commitment to addressing energy and climate change issues. Experts agree there's no one path to tackling these challenges - it's going to take a combination of traditional and alternative sources. That's why the President advocated for a "new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants" as part of a broad-based strategy to reduce emissions and increase our nation's energy independence. We at Business Roundtable share his commitment to advancing this carbon-free energy source.
We recently released a report outlining steps policymakers should take in order to reduce emissions and increase our energy security at a manageable economic cost. Our report found that increasing nuclear power (the only existing scalable, low-carbon base load generation technology) was one of the surest ways to reduce emissions while meeting our rising energy needs - which, according to the Energy Information Administration's 2010 Annual Energy Outlook, are set to grow by 14 percent between 2008 and 2035.