LONDON: Developed countries are increasingly bold in planning to reduce nuclear power but hesitant in announcing clear plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, leaving themselves wriggle room to replace low carbon nuclear generation with fossil fuel gas.
It is particularly tempting to be vague about timetables for cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as countries have failed to explain how lost nuclear capacity could be matched by a ramp-up in carbon capture and storage (CCS), which remains untested on gas and coal-fired power.
The temptation to delay decisions — and development of CCS — is especially strong as the consequences of phasing out nuclear will be felt mostly after 2020 as aging plants are retired.
Several developed countries have announced plans for shifting away from or phasing out nuclear power, including Germany, Japan, Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland, but none have formal, binding CO2 targets after 2020.
The most probable outcome is that interim CO2 targets will continue to be weak or to be broken, as unabated gas and coal power generation is used to replace lost nuclear capacity.
The European Commission said last December that all fossil fuel power plants should be fitted with expensive CCS from around 2030, if the European Union is to slash emissions by the middle of the century.
“CCS contributes significantly toward decarbonization in most scenarios, with the highest penetration in case with nuclear constraints,” it said in its “Energy Roadmap 2050.”
CCS is meant to trap carbon emissions from fossil fuel flue gases and pipe them underground, but is still untested at a commercial scale on power plants partly because it adds at least $ 1.5 billion to the upfront capital cost per gigawatt of electricity generating capacity.
The alternatives are either to eliminate fossil fuels except as back-up for renewable energy, or else to relax medium-term carbon emissions targets, most of which are only aspirational and therefore politically feasible to downgrade.
The impact on unabated gas-fired power of ambitious carbon emissions targets is being debated in earnest only in Britain, which is alone in having legally binding CO2 targets beyond 2020.
Other countries are content to announce firmer plans for nuclear power in the 2020s and beyond, but not for carbon.
Coal-dependent Poland in June even voted against allowing the European Commission to propose a 2030 carbon emissions target, alone against the EU’s other 26 member states.
The commission will now prepare a discussion paper which has no timeline yet, although Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger suggested last December that a decision should be made by 2014 on 2030 goals.
French President Francois Hollande last Friday called for deeper cuts in European Union CO2 emissions as he confirmed plans to scale back nuclear power to half of the country’s power generation, by 2025, from three-quarters now.
Hollande recommended a target for a 40 percent cut in European Union carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030, but did not specify a French national target.
That echoed a European Commission impact assessment, attached to the energy roadmap last December, which suggested energy-related carbon emissions cuts of 38-41 percent by 2030, below 1990 levels.
Japan’s government has backed a withdrawal from nuclear, if not a complete exit, by applying a 40-year limit on the lifetime of reactors, which means most would shut down by the 2030s.
Tokyo also last week suggested a goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.
That is less ambitious than Japan’s present target to cut emissions by 25 percent a decade earlier, by 2020, which was conditional on a global climate deal that is now out of sight.
Unlike European countries, therefore, Japan may be happy to acknowledge that reducing or phasing out nuclear will come at the expense of climate targets.
Germany was the first country to react to Japan’s Fukushima crisis, deciding completely to abandon nuclear power in a step-by-step process that is to culminate in 2022.
Berlin has voluntary targets to cut carbon emissions by 55 percent by 2030 over 1990 levels.
Both the European Commission and the International Energy Agency have made it clear that most fossil fuel power generation would have to apply CCS from around 2030 to meet ambitious greenhouse gas cuts, especially in a scenario with less nuclear power.
But the EU is way off the target to deploy 10-12 commercial-scale CCS power plants by 2015, as originally envisaged, with none under construction yet and plans announced in July for just two to three using a fund raised from auctioning emissions permits.
In the “low nuclear case” set out in its World Energy Outlook late last year, the International Energy Agency modeled an arbitrary scenario where the world’s nuclear capacity was barely half that expected under present policies.
It found that staying on track to meet ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions would still be possible, but only where CCS was “very widely deployed by 2035.”
Britain will provide a first test of these energy choices, in a country that has encouraged new nuclear power, with the government promising a gas strategy before year-end.
Its climate advisory panel, the Committee on Climate Change, has proposed emissions cuts of 60 percent by 2030, plus an almost zero carbon grid, and gas-fired power limited to operations which cut carbon using CCS or as back-up to renewable energy.
The Committee last week wrote to Liberal Democrat climate and energy minister, Edward Davey, saying: “Extensive use of unabated gas-fired capacity ... without carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) in 2030 and beyond would be incompatible with meeting legislated carbon budgets.”
Davey replied: “After 2030 we expect that gas will increasingly be used only as back up, or fitted with Carbon Capture and Storage technology,” not quite meeting the committee’s expectations.
Meanwhile, Conservative finance minister George Osborne appears much less keen, announcing gas investment tax cuts in July, and adding: “The government is signaling its long-term commitment to the role it (gas) can play in delivering a stable, secure and lower-carbon energy mix.”
The signs therefore are of a fudge, where the government will avoid fixing a date to mandate CCS with gas-fired power, or a target for grid carbon intensity in 2030.
That would be consistent with global trends where such decisions are avoided for a decade or more, implying more gas and coal, and therefore more carbon dioxide.
The author is a Reuters
market analyst. The views expressed are his own.
Targets to cut carbon lag nuclear phase-out
Targets to cut carbon lag nuclear phase-out
Saudi youth turn to AI for art and culture
- Creativity, heritage and technology converge in a new generation of artists
RIYADH: As Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 places creativity, culture and technological innovation at the core of national development, the impact of these priorities is becoming increasingly visible across a wide range of disciplines and practices.
Through the use of artificial intelligence, young Saudis are integrating technology into their creative work both as a practical tool and as a medium in its own right. In doing so, they are expanding their capabilities, exploring personal and collective identity, and finding new ways to preserve and reinterpret cultural heritage.
“AI gives young Saudis a new way to interact with their own cultural inheritance,” said Dmitry Zaytsev, founder of Dandelion Civilization, a platform designed to help individuals shape unique professional paths.
“Traditional design elements such as calligraphy or geometric motifs were once difficult to modify. Experimentation required resources and formal approval. AI removes that barrier and makes exploration immediate. A creator can test many versions of a pattern and see which ones still feel authentic to them,” he told Arab News.
According to Zaytsev, this emerging form of expression does not signal a rejection of tradition, but rather a deeper engagement with it. “The young creator discovers what can change and what must remain constant. AI becomes a sketchbook that allows culture to evolve through curiosity rather than fear. When creators correct a model or push it toward local rhythm, they strengthen rather than dilute cultural identity,” he explained.
Sarah AlBaiz, an art adviser, researcher and artist, uses code to blend visual art with concepts drawn from culture and philosophy. While her early practice focused primarily on painting, her trajectory shifted during the 2020 AI Artathon, a pioneering international event highlighting collaboration between humans and machines in artmaking, where she discovered how to merge her engineering background with her creative work.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Saudi youth are using AI as a creative tool to reinterpret heritage, from calligraphy to folklore.
• AI is helping artists experiment faster without the traditional barriers of resources or formal approval.
• The Kingdom is backing creative AI nationally, with programs like SAMAI aiming to empower 1 million Saudis for an AI-driven future.
Operating within the field of computational creativity, where technology actively participates in the artistic process, AlBaiz explores themes of finance and faith. “Because they’re two sides of who I am,” she said. “When you talk about values, for example, that is both a term used in finance and trade from an objective perspective, but also moral and spiritual value.”
“When you understand prompting in AI, you can get it to produce almost anything. But it’s also informed by the training data it has,” she said.
Rather than relying on a single platform, AlBaiz experiments with multiple AI models to test their limitations and audience reception. “I work a lot with language as well, so large language models are right up my street when it comes to computational creativity.”ee
Her work has gained international recognition. At the 2022 Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, she co-created an artwork under the banner of Super Artistic AI that generated Al-Qatt Al-Asiri motifs from southern Saudi Arabia. The piece received an Audience Award.
Beyond her artistic practice, AlBaiz is developing an intelligent art advisory system aimed at helping users navigate the Saudi art landscape. Designed as an initial point of contact, the system would guide users through potential pathways before they engage with a human adviser.
“It’s about understanding what role AI plays in the pursuit of what you want,” she said. “When I decided to focus on Qantara and building the advisory, I recognized that many of the systems required would need to be intelligent systems that offload a lot of work from me and the team.”
“When AI is an enabler rather than the end result, it becomes less intimidating because it feels risk-free for the end user,” she added.
Zaytsev echoed this idea, describing AI as a kind of rehearsal space. “Young people practice conversations, explore sensitive topics and organize their thoughts without social risk. This builds emotional clarity and confidence,” he said.
While generative tools such as large language models attract much of the attention, AI’s creative applications extend far beyond text and image generation.
Fairooz Alawami, trained as both an architect and engineer, uses AI to create self-expressive visual works inspired by dance.
“My practice is focused on contextualizing movement,” she said. “Because of my architectural training, I work with 3D modeling software called Rhino, which includes a visual coding language. Within that environment, you can also write code in Python, JavaScript or C#.”
Alawami employs OpenPose to analyze videos of her dancing by mapping points across her body. She then applies another computer vision model, MIDAS, which converts images or videos into depth frames. “If OpenPose gives me a skeleton, MIDAS gives me depth,” she explained. The resulting data is fed into 3D modeling software, where it is refined and manipulated into finished artworks.
She began dancing at a young age. “I didn’t find it, it found me,” she said. Movement later became the foundation of her artistic practice, leading to her first major project around three years ago while completing her master’s degree using the Grasshopper plugin. At the time, the workflow was slow and fragmented, but the arrival of ChatGPT helped streamline the process by making it easier to write and learn code.
“I think my love for dance and my love for art and design came together in a way that felt uniquely me,” she said. “Once I found that space, I just ran with it. It is my singular voice.”
Her work also draws heavily on cultural and musical heritage. One recent project was inspired by folklore referenced in the iconic song “Al Leila wa Leila” by Umm Kulthum. Alawami extracted musical stems from the track and mapped them to characters within the narrative. “The vocals were Shahrazad, the storyteller, and each stem represented a different narrative element,” she said. Earlier works were influenced by Islamic architecture and the geometric patterns found throughout Saudi Arabia and the wider Arab world.
“There are some incredible artists using generative AI to do very impressive things, and I don’t think I fall into that camp,” she said. “For me, AI is more like a skills-gap tool that helps me reach where I want to go.
“As humans, whether we realize it or not, the act of creating feeds us in some way. Lowering the barrier to entry makes creativity less intimidating.”
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Today, Saudi Arabia’s creative sector is supported by expanding national infrastructure. Initiatives such as the Cultural Scholarship Program place Saudi students in more than 60 universities worldwide, spanning disciplines from archaeology and literature to design, filmmaking and culinary arts. In parallel, the Kingdom launched the SAMAI initiative last year, aiming to equip 1 million Saudis with the skills needed to engage confidently in an AI-driven world.
Within Vision 2030, culture, tourism, digitalization and AI are treated as strategic sectors rather than peripheral concerns. As Saudi Arabia develops its creative economy as a form of soft power, its youth are becoming increasingly digitally fluent. AI tools are now embedded within creative workflows, enabling a new generation to explore heritage, remix traditional aesthetics and develop narratives that resonate on a global stage.
