Small modular reactors (SMRs) are moving from concept to commercial reality. A new forecast from GlobalData suggests global SMR capacity could increase nearly sixfold between 2025 and 2030.
The projection reflects rising confidence in advanced nuclear technology as countries search for reliable, low-carbon electricity. This demand is being driven by electrification, artificial intelligence (AI), data center growth, and industrial decarbonization.
For years, SMRs were seen as a long-term idea. That view is now shifting. Governments are updating nuclear policies. Regulators are speeding up licensing reviews. Utilities are forming partnerships with technology developers.
At the same time, electricity demand is rising sharply, strengthening the case for firm power sources capable of operating 24/7. This momentum comes as countries try to meet net-zero targets while also ensuring stable and affordable energy supplies.
Why SMRs Are Gaining Momentum
SMRs are nuclear reactors that typically produce up to 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity per unit. Unlike large nuclear plants, they are designed to be built in factories and assembled on site.
Supporters say this modular approach can reduce construction time, improve cost control, and make deployment more flexible. SMRs can also be added in phases, depending on demand growth.
GlobalData’s forecast reflects a wider revival in nuclear energy. The firm expects global nuclear capacity to grow steadily over the next decade, by almost sixfold from 2025 to 2030. That increase could even reach a hundredfold by 2040. Cleaner energy goals, policy backing, and increasing demand for stable baseload electricity will support this growth.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) also expects strong long-term growth. In its Announced Pledges Scenario, the IEA predicts over 1,000 SMRs to be used worldwide by 2050. This would add up to about 120 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. It also estimates SMR investment could rise from about $5 billion today to more than $25 billion by 2030.
Meanwhile, major SMR projects are moving forward. GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300 design will be used at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site in Canada. This is one of the most advanced SMR projects currently in planning.
Holtec International is also advancing plans to install SMR-300 reactors at the Palisades site in Michigan. The company has outlined a long-term vision that could scale SMR capacity across North America to as much as 10 GW in the coming decades.
These early projects are important. They will test cost, speed, and performance. Their results will help determine how quickly SMRs can scale globally.
Nuclear Power’s Quiet Climate Comeback
As countries move toward net-zero targets, nuclear energy is receiving renewed attention as a low-emissions power source.
According to the IEA, nuclear is the world’s second-largest source of low-emissions electricity after hydropower. In 2024, more than 410 reactors in over 30 countries supplied about 9% of global electricity. Nuclear also generated more low-carbon electricity than wind and significantly more than solar.
- Since 1971, nuclear power has helped avoid roughly 72 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
This climate contribution is becoming more important as electricity demand rises and countries retire coal plants. The IEA expects global nuclear generation to reach a record high in 2025, supported by reactor restarts in Japan, maintenance work in France, and new builds in Asia.
More than 60 reactors are currently under construction worldwide, adding over 70 GW of new capacity.
SMRs could strengthen this role further. Their smaller size makes them suitable for regions where large nuclear plants are not practical. They may also replace aging coal plants by using existing grid infrastructure.
In addition, SMRs are being considered for industrial uses such as hydrogen production, mining, and heavy manufacturing, where steady heat and power are required.
Big Tech and Data Centers Drive New Power Demand
One of the strongest drivers for SMR growth is the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and data centers. AI systems require large amounts of electricity. Training and operating these systems depend on high-performance computing infrastructure that runs continuously. This is pushing electricity demand higher in key technology hubs.
Goldman Sachs has raised its forecast for AI-related capital spending by major hyperscalers. The bank now expects Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet to invest about $5.3 trillion between 2025 and 2030, up from a previous estimate of $4.5 trillion. A large share of this spending will go into AI infrastructure, data centers, and supporting energy systems.
Moreover, Goldman Sachs Research estimates global data center electricity demand could increase by as much as 165% by 2030 compared with 2023 levels.
This surge in demand is changing energy planning. While renewable energy remains central to corporate climate strategies, many technology companies are also looking for stable, round-the-clock power sources.
SMRs are increasingly viewed as a potential solution because they can provide constant power without weather dependence. Unlike wind or solar, nuclear plants can operate day and night continuously. This reliability is becoming more important as AI workloads grow and grids face higher stress.
As a result, several SMR developers are now targeting data center operators as future customers, alongside traditional utilities.
The First Wave of SMR Projects Breaks Ground
The SMR industry is now entering a more practical phase, with several flagship projects moving toward construction and deployment.
In Canada, Ontario Power Generation is advancing the first commercial deployment of GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300 reactor at the Darlington site. This project is widely seen as a key test case for SMR commercialization in North America.
In the United States, TerraPower continues development of its Natrium reactor in Wyoming. The project, backed by Bill Gates, combines nuclear generation with advanced energy storage. This design aims to improve flexibility and help balance electricity grids with growing renewable energy penetration.
These developments mark an important shift. The industry is moving beyond design and licensing discussions and into construction, financing, and real-world deployment.
The Roadblocks on the Nuclear Revival Path
Despite strong momentum, SMRs still face major challenges.
- Cost remains the most important issue. Early projects must prove that factory-based construction can reliably reduce total costs compared with traditional nuclear plants.
- Regulatory approval is another barrier. Even though licensing frameworks are improving, nuclear projects still require long review timelines in most countries.
- Fuel supply is also a concern. Many advanced SMR designs depend on high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), but global supply chains are still limited.
- There are also broader concerns around nuclear waste management and public acceptance, which continue to influence project timelines in several regions.
These challenges explain why some analysts remain cautious about near-term deployment, even while long-term forecasts are becoming more positive.
Outlook: A Defining Decade for SMRs
The next five years could be decisive for SMRs. Global momentum is being driven by several overlapping trends. Electricity demand is rising. AI growth is accelerating. Countries are committing to net-zero targets. Energy security has become a national priority. At the same time, nuclear technology is improving.
GlobalData’s forecast of a nearly sixfold increase in SMR capacity by 2030 reflects growing confidence that the sector is approaching commercial scale.
While SMRs are still in the early stages of deployment, progress in Canada, the United States, China, and other regions suggests the industry is moving closer to wider adoption.
If current projects succeed, SMRs could become an important part of the global low-carbon energy mix. They may help support grid stability, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and provide the steady power needed for a more electrified and digital economy.
The post SMRs Set for Breakout: Global Nuclear Capacity Forecast to Jump Nearly Sixfold by 2030 appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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