Poster #35 - Has the climate crisis motivated environmental NGOs to embrace nuclear energy?

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

This paper examines how environmental NGOs’ views on nuclear energy are shifting in response to climate change and energy security concerns within a complex geopolitical context. Historically, ENGOs have been skeptical or opposed to nuclear power, shaped by the legacies of anti-nuclear movements and catastrophic accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Yet intensifying climate urgency, growing electricity demand, and renewed geopolitical instability have reopened debate about nuclear energy’s role in delivering zero-emission power, grid reliability, and energy security in the transition to a sustainable energy future. These shifts matter for public policy because ENGOs are influential actors in climate and energy debates, shaping legislative agendas, regulatory design, and the political feasibility of clean energy pathways.

We investigate whether and how ENGOs’ positions on nuclear energy are evolving, with attention to whether more organizations are taking explicit stances and how those positions have changed over time. We hypothesize that legacy ENGOs will continue to oppose nuclear energy, while climate-focused NGOs may increasingly support it as part of a broader climate and energy security strategy. In contrast, issue-specific NGOs are expected to remain comparatively quiet on the nuclear debate, even when they publicly endorse climate action and clean energy goals more generally. More broadly, this research speaks to how advocacy organizations can influence public policy by legitimizing or constraining policy options in moments of transition and uncertainty.

Empirically, we analyze a random sample of 300 large U.S. ENGOs working on energy issues broadly defined, examining website content from two key periods, 2016 and 2025, using archival data from the Wayback Machine. To identify organizational positions on nuclear energy, we use an AI classifier trained on previously hand-coded data, allowing us to systematically detect stance changes across a large corpus of web content. This approach makes it possible to assess how ENGOs have responded to shifting federal policy, public discourse, and international energy security concerns over time.

Author

• Elizabeth Echavarria, University of Washington
  Presenting Author