Currently there is a bill going through the US Congress that could put a price on carbon emissions. This would mean that companies would have to pay a kind of “green tax” and the magnitude of this charge would be relative to the organisation’s CO2 output.

This issue caught our eye in the recent issue of “The Economist” and it adds yet another argument to the ever growing list for more nuclear power.

The bill is of course aiming to curb carbon emissions but ultimately it is trying to motivate people to use other forms of energy apart from fossil fuels. The most obvious choice in our opinion is nuclear energy.

Now let us consider a hypothetical scenario. This carbon pricing bill is passed in Congress and the US now has to pay its carbon emissions. Businesses that emit more carbon are at a competitive disadvantage to those who emit less. So if you were governor of a state in America and you wanted to give your state an economic boost, then why not build a few nuclear power stations?

This would give the businesses in your state an advantage over others as your businesses are not forced to pay the carbon penalties. Would this create a race across the USA to build nuclear power plants in order to lower emissions? Who knows, but so long as CO2 emissions are reduced, Congress will have achieved there aim.

Of course, nuclear power is not the only form of energy production that doesn’t emit CO2, but it is the only viable, economic and reliable solution to lower carbon emissions whilst maintaining a stable energy supply.

However if this policy of carbon pricing spreads to other countries then we could see big businesses and carbon intensive industries concentrating their expansion plans and even relocating to the countries with the lowest “carbon cost”. Could this begin a war of “Green Protectionism”? The writer for The Economist certainly thinks so and we are inclined to agree. However what we may also see is a rush of countries towards building nuclear power plants and other CO2 free energy solutions in order to offer businesses a carbon free supply of energy. What would this do to the value of our uranium stocks? Yes, you guessed it, up, up and away!

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