Japan, with few resources, “will seek to maximize the use of renewable energy” (Philip FONG) PHOTO: Wind power on a beach
By AFP - Agence France Presse
Japan will make renewables the main source of energy by 2040
Hiroshi HIYAMA
Japan wants renewables to be its main source of energy by 2040 in its drive to become carbon neutral by the middle of the century, according to government plans unveiled on Tuesday.
Thirteen years after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Tokyo has also reaffirmed that it sees an important role for nuclear power in helping Japan meet the growing energy demands of artificial intelligence and microchip factories.
The world's fourth largest economy has the dirtiest energy mix in the G7, activists say, with fossil fuels accounting for almost 70% of its power generation last year.
The government has already set itself the target of becoming carbon neutral by 2050 and reducing emissions by 46% by 2030 compared to 2013 levels.
According to the new plans, renewable energies, such as solar and wind power, are expected to account for 40 to 50% of electricity generation by 2040.
This represents a leap from last year's level of 23% and the previous target for 2030 of 38%.
Resource-poor Japan “will aim to maximize the use of renewable energy as our main source of power,” according to the draft Strategic Energy Plan.
Government experts were analyzing the proposals released by the Natural Resources and Energy Agency, and they were due to be presented to the cabinet for approval.
Japan aims to avoid relying too heavily on a single energy source to ensure “both a stable energy supply and decarbonization,” according to the draft.
Geopolitical concerns affecting power lines, from the war in Ukraine to unrest in the Middle East, are also behind the shift to renewables and nuclear, it said.
- Imports
Almost 70% of Japan's energy needs in 2023 were met by power plants burning coal, gas, and oil.
Almost everything has to be imported, which last year cost Japan around US$500 million a day.
The government wants this figure to fall to 30-40% by 2040.
The previously announced target for 2030 was 41%, or 42%, when hydrogen and ammonia were included.
The new plans foresee a 10% to 20% jump in overall electricity generation by 2040, from 985 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2023.
“Securing decarbonized sources of electricity is an issue directly related to our country's economic growth,” Yoshifumi Murase, head of the national energy agency, told the government's expert panel on Tuesday.
- Nuclear -
Unlike the previous plan from three years ago, the new draft does not include reducing Japan's dependence on nuclear power “as much as possible” - a goal set after the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
Japan shut down nuclear power plants across the country after the tsunami-caused Fukushima meltdown, the worst atomic disaster of this century.
However, the country is gradually putting them back into operation, despite public backlash in some places, reflecting the return of nuclear power in other countries, too.
Nuclear power accounts for around 20% of Japan's energy needs according to the targets for 2040, roughly the same as the current target for 2030.
But this is more than double the 8.5% share of total energy generation that nuclear power provided in 2023.
- Too little, too late -
Hirotaka Koike, from Greenpeace, welcomed the new plan but said it was “too little and too late,” calling for “much greater ambition” about renewable energies.
Japan “has committed to ‘fully or predominantly decarbonized energy systems by 2035,’ and its current plan is not enough,” said Koike.
Hanna Hakko, from climate think-tank E3G, also called Japan's ambitions “rather disappointing.”
“The energy mix suggested by the government is not consistent with Japan's international commitments to tackle climate change and accelerate the transition to clean energy,” Hakko told AFP.
“Various scenarios drawn up by energy experts show that if the government adopted supportive policies, renewable energy could expand to cover between 60% and 80% of Japan's electricity generation mix in the second half of the 2030s,” she said.
hih-kaf-stu/mtp
コメント