Balancing the nuclear equation: Climate policy uncertainty and budgetary dynamics

Abstract

Amidst the uncertainties of climate policy, investing in nuclear energy technology emerges as a sustainable strategy, fostering innovation in a critical sector, while simultaneously addressing urgent environmental concerns and managing budgetary dynamics. Our investigation inspects the asymmetric influence of climate policy uncertainty on nuclear energy technology in the top 10 nations with the highest nuclear energy R&D budgets (Germany, Japan, China, France, USA, UK, India, South Korea, Russia, and Canada). Previous studies adopted panel data methods to evaluate the linkage between climate policy uncertainty and nuclear energy technology. Nonetheless, these investigations overlooked the variability in this association across various countries. Conversely, this investigation introduces an innovative tool, ‘Quantile-on-Quantile’ to probe this connection merely for every economy. This methodology concedes for a more accurate evaluation, offering a holistic global perspective and delivering tailored insights for individual countries. The findings uncover that climate policy uncertainty significantly reduces nuclear energy technology budgets across multiple quantiles in most selected economies. Additionally, our results highlight the asymmetries in the correlations between our variables across the nations. These findings stress the need for policymakers to conduct thorough assessments and skillfully manage climate policy uncertainty and nuclear energy budgets.