On 21 July, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced a summary of Japanese Feed in Tariffs (FITs), in which electric power companies are required to buy the electricity generated by all types of renewable sources of energy by households and businesses. FITs seek to promote the adoption of renewable energy sources by offering long-term contracts for the ‘green’ electricity produced by them at fixed purchase prices.

Purchase prices are to be 48 yen/kWh for solar power, which will be gradually decreased, and 15 to 20 yen/kWh for the other types of the ‘green’ electricity. The contract periods are to be 10 years for solar power and 15 to 20 years for the others. In FITs, electricity users  have to bear costs of purchasing the ‘green’ electricity and, according to the summary, the maximum monthly burdens for standard households and for large-scale factories in ten years after Japanese Feed in Tariff (FIT) is to be introduced will be approximately 150 to 200 yen and 1.2 million to 1.63 million yen, respectively.

METI expects that FITs would contribute to CO2 emission reduction by 2% (approximately 24 million to 29 million tons) in ten years after its introduction because FITs would accelerate technological development and promotion of renewable energy. Masayuki Naoshima, Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry, emphasized ‘total national benefits from FITs will be greater than total national burdens’ because they would expand the environment-related market. METI sought to start FIT in 2012 after working out its details within this year.

METI’s summary for FITs is unpopular not only for businesses but citizens. Regarding businesses, as mentioned above, as FITs would increase the electricity prices, they are basically against FITs. For instance, the Japan Iron and Steal Federation suggested in a hearing held by METI that FITs would put Japanese iron and steal industries in a disadvantageous position in a global competition with China.

Finally and most seriously, citizens are seemingly not for FITs suggested by METI. For an article on this news released by Jiji Tsushin, 84 visitors (Yahoo!Japan News) left 113 comments. Then, among the top 100 comments sorted by the number of  ’agrees’,  there were only 3 comments that clearly supported FITs though the most agreed comment among them was ranked 38th.  According to a brief discourse analysis of mine, citizens (or the visitors) are against FITs mainly because (1) FITs would worsen the income difference between the rich and the poor, (2) households would have to suffer more burdens while businesses would be able to reduce their burdens, and (3) METI’s FIT plan had flaws. Further, many of them did not support FITs because they were unsatisfied with climate change policies of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), a ruling party, especially on the ’25%’ target and a large amount of money spent to buy credits from China, one of the world largest emitters.

The summary of Japanese FITs proposed by METI might be a great first step for Japanese renewable policies. However, it is not sufficiently supported by businesses, environmental groups and citizens. Thus, though it might be difficult to create FITs in which everybody agrees, it is necessary to improve the current ‘everybody is unhappy’ situation.  Especially, it is very much problematic that FITs lacks citizens’ support as they have been recently frustrated with climate change policies of DPJ and DPJ itself. Details of FITs should be carefully examined so that renewable energy can be widely promoted, contributing to the energy security and CO2 emission reduction in Japan. However, successes of FITs or renewable energy policies and climate change policies in Japan depend more on whether public support for them can be increased.

copyright: Fukui Shinbun

Almost one month has passed after Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), was appointed as Prime Minister of Japan in September 16. According to a public opinion poll carried out by Yomiuri Shinbun in September 17, 75 percent of its respondents supported the ‘Hatoyama’ cabinet, the second highest figure after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s cabinet, since Yomiuri started carrying out its popularity surveys in 1978.  Further, surprisingly, the opinion poll showed that 74 percent supported the proposal of DPJ to reduce emissions of Japan by 25 percent by 2020, compared to the 1990 level. Thus, it could be argued that most Japanese expected Yukio Hatoyama to dramatically advance its climate change policy. But has he really changed Japan’s climate change policy that dramatically?

The most dramatic change that Hatoyama has achieved lies in his declaration that Japan would seek to cut its emissions by 25 percent by 2020 as the mid-term target compared to the 1990 level. As the target of the previous Government led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and New Komeito was 8 percent, this is a great advance for Japanese climate change policy.

Then, in order to materialize the target, on October 7, the cabinet committee on climate change established two work teams; one to estimate the costs to achieve the target; the other to identify concrete measures of the ‘Hatoyama Initiative’ to support developing countries announced at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change (New York) on September 22. Then, the former team, ‘the team concerning the achievement of the mid-term target’, held its first meeting in October 14. At the meeting, it was decided that a specialist group would be established under the team for estimating costs to achieve the mid-term target, and an interim report on cost estimation would be produced in this month and a final report would be produced in December before COP15 in Copenhagen.

These two may be all that New Prime Minister has achieved for climate change policy so far. Then, has he changed Japan’s climate change policy dramatically? It seems that he has dramatically changed it because he has proposed ambitious target. However, the seemingly ambitious ’25 percent’ includes reductions from buying carbon credits, GHG absorption by forests and plants, etc., as well as the domestic reductions. At the first meeting of the team concerning the achievement of the mid-term target, it was suggested as one plan that cost estimation would be carried out for the following three patterns; among the 25 percent reductions, (1) 10 percent will be reduced domestically; (2) 15 percent will be reduced domestically; and (3) all of them will be reduced domestically. If the total amount of domestic reductions is 10 percent or even 15 percent, it must be rather disappointing.

Thus, it should be said that he has not changed Japan’s climate change policy dramatically so far. However, the birth of the Hatoyama cabinet has clearly increased environmental concerns and made industry motivated to become greener. It is highly expected that new Prime Minister, with greener people and industry, will change climate change policy dramatically or concretely propose radical climate change policy before COP15 in December so that he can be considered as one of the greenest leaders of the world again as in the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in New York.

(c)yomiuri online

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won 308 of the 480 seats though the ruling bloc of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and New Komeito got only 140 seats in the Lower House election on Sunday. This is a landslide victory for DPJ, as DPJ had only 115 seats while the ruling bloc had 331 seats before the election. It can be called ‘revolution’ because LDP was out of power for only 11 months (1993-1994) and was always the largest party.

Then, the question is ‘can the new government led by DPJ reduce GHG emissions more than the Government led by LDP/New Komeito for the greener future?’

As climate change issues were not sufficiently discussed during an election campaign period because other topics such as employment and social welfare were main issues, it is difficult to answer the question.

However, as shown in the previous post, as far as climate change issues are concerned, DPJ is more ambitious and environmental groups and environmentalists normally support DPJ. Indeed, DPJ proposes stricter mid-term targets than the Government in its manifesto. Namely, DPJ promises to cut GHG emissions reductions by 30 percent below the 2005 level by 2020 though the government’s target is 15 percent. Before the Government chose this target, the Economic bloc (e.g. the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Nippon Keidanren) proposed 4% while the Environment bloc (e.g. the Ministry of the Environment and environmental NGOs) suggested 20-30%. Thus, the LDP’s proposal is a compromise but the DPJ’s proposal is clearly the one proposed by the environment bloc.

Although there seems a big difference between them, the difference might not be so big because 15 percent is the total amount of ‘domestic’ reductions of GHG gas emissions while 30 percent is the total amount of reductions achieved by reducing domestic GHG gas emissions as well as buying carbon credits, GHG absorption by forests and plants, and etc.  Nonetheless, according to an anonymous highly-ranked official of the Ministry of the Environment, ‘the DPJ’s targets are clearly stricter.’ Katsuya Okada, the Secretary-General of DPJ, emphasizes, ‘by setting ambitious targets, we want to take an initiative in international negotiation on climate change.’ In order to achieve the targets, DPJ has considered introduction of a wide range of measures, such as a domestic emissions trading system and a global warming tax, though Japanese industries have been strongly against these measures.

The DPJ’s proposal has been severely criticized mainly by LDP and industries as infeasible and unrealistic, again as told in the previous post. For instance, Akihiro Sawa, a senior researcher at the 21st century public policy institute, a thinktank established by Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), criticized the proposal because of three reasons.  First, according to Sawa, DPJ has not clarified how much the costs to achieve its proposed targets will be. While LDP clarified that the costs will be 76,000 yen per year per household, DPJ has not. Second, he argued that though a domestic emissions trading system and a global warming tax (environmental tax) cannot be introduced at the same time in terms of policy objectives and policy effects, DPJ considers introducing both. Third, he maintained that, although DPJ insists that Japan will be highly evaluated by the world and take an initiative in international negotiation on climate change by setting the mid-term targets as 30%, the world would not evaluate Japan so highly because developing countries such as India and China required industrialized nations to reduce GHG emissions more.

Further, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry pointed out that if Japan is to achieve the mid-term targets of DPJ, it would cost more than 190 trillion yen for ten years, leading to critical economic damages to the Japanese economy, while the Government’s targets would require approximately 62 trillion yen. Moreover, Tetsuo Saito, Minister for the Environment, criticized that though DPJ proposes stricter targets in its manifesto, DPJ inconsistently proposes  to make highway charges free, which would lead to increases in CO2 emissions from automobiles.

Thus, it is now unclear whether the new government led by DPJ can reduce GHG emissions more than the Government led by LDP/New Komeito for the greener future. However, one thing that is clear is that DPJ will attempt to reduce GHG emissions more than the Government whether its attempt will be successful or not.

… but doesn’t agree on when to turn down the heat. This is Oxfam’s resumé on the freshly released G8 climate change communiqué. Leaders could not improve on last year’s commitment of “a 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050”. They did however agree that to reach such a global reduction, developed countries will have to reduce their emissions by 80% by 2050. There was no agreement on a specific year as a baseline, and the final wording – “compared to 1990 or more recent years” – reflects the disagreement between the EU who pushed for a 1990 baseline and the USA and Japan who want future emissions to be compared to a more recent reference year.

As hoped and expected, it was agreed, however, that “the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2°C.” This is the first time that the US has officially agreed to such a target, something that would have been unimaginable under George W. Bush. The Canadians were opposed to this statement earlier this week, but after long negotiations and NGO campaigns from the likes of Avaaz, Canada accepted the language.

Like last year, no interim goal has been agreed on, though the EU’s push for a 2020 goal is reflected in the statement that a 50% reduction by 2050 “implies that global emissions need to peak as soon as possible and decline thereafter”. This lack of an interim target does not sit well with a 2°C target as Kim Carstensen, leader of the WWF Global Climate Initiative, puts it: “What are [world leaders] going to do between now and 2020? If they don’t outline a path to reach the announced goal, the 2 degree statement will just join a long list of broken promises.”

In the short term, they will be working on their economic recovery. The deterioration of the economic climate is noticeable throughout the document. Yet, positively, the trend to “green” individual stimulus packages (at least rhetorically) has been picked up in the communiqué: “We must seize the opportunity to build on synergies between actions to combat climate change and economic recovery initiatives, and encourage growth and sustainable development worldwide.”

For those interested in adaptation and forestry, the document seems to have something on offer.  The document mentions the “possible security implications of the adverse impact of climate change and the potential for increased conflicts over scarcer resources.” It goes on to discuss not only deforestation but also land degradation and the importance of biodiversity.

The bottom line is that apart from the lack of interim targets, most NGOs and other observers agree that the communique is adequate. Or as John Kirton, of the G8 Research Group, put it – “It met my standards.”

The G8 leaders will now take this communique to the Major Economies Forum tomorrow.  There Obama will chair a difficult meeting in which he will attempt to reverse China and India’s longstanding opposition to adopting quantitative emissions targets.

By Ruth Brandt, Niel Bowerman and Marie Karaisl

©Sankei

On 10 June, Taro Aso, Prime Minister of Japan, pledged that Japan would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent below the 2005 levels by 2020 (8 percent below the 1990 levels). He expected that, achieving this mid-term target would lead to greenhouse gas emissions reductions approximately by 25 percent by 2030 and then by 70 percent by 2050.

Japan had six plans for the mid-term target, ranging from 4 percent reductions below the 2005 levels to 30 percent reductions.  The mid-term target came from one of the six plans, 14 percent reductions below the 2005 levels. This plan has been reinforced by another one percent because the Komei party, comprising the ruling coalition with the liberal democratic party, and the Ministry of the Environment, strongly demanded a more ambitious target.

One of the main reasons for this choice is that the Japanese people favour the 14 percent reductions plan. On 24 May 2009, Cabinet Secretariat showed the results of the ‘public opinion poll concerning the mid-term target for global warming’. According to the results, 45.4 percent of the respondents were for the 14 percent reductions plan: 15.3 percent for the 4 percent reductions plan; 13.5 percent for the 21 percent reductions plan; and 4.9 percent for the 30 percent reductions plan. Although the respondents were shown how much each household had to pay to reduce greenhouse gases by 14 percent  (i.e. 80,000 yen in a year), most of the respondents chose this target. Aso said in his mail magazine on 11 June that he deeply respected the good sense of his people. If the Japanese people favoured a less ambitious target, he could not have made this decision despite strong industrial oppositions. Indeed, generally, the Japanese industry very strongly demanded that Japan had to choose a 4 percent reductions plan. In addition, though the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry demanded a target that would not severely damage the Japanese economy, it compromised to accept the 14 percent reductions plan because it said that 14 percent reductions would be possible with the introduction of most updated technologies.This may be another important reason that Aso chose this target.

Although Japan chose the ambitious target, it is apparently difficult for Japan to achieve it. Though Japan ambitiously vowed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent below the 1990 levels by 2012 under the Kyoto protocol agreement , Japan has been unable to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and it would possibly fail to achieve it, mainly because the Japanese Government has been highly concerned with protecting the industry from suffering costs for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is questionable whether the Government can persuade the industry to reduce dramatically greenhouse gas emissions to achieve the more stringent mid-term target though it has failed to do so to achieve the Kyoto protocol agreement.

Finally, it should be emphasized that the Government must consider how the mid-term target influence the most vulnerable segments of the society including the poor, the handicapped, children and the elderly, which has been almost totally neglected in the discussion of the mid-term target. Because achieving the mid-term target clearly requires a wide range of ‘changes’ in the society, the Government has to be concerned with influences of the target placed onto them. Although the mid-term target has been finally set, there are a number of difficult and complicated issues that Japan has to start to work out for achieving the target.

On April 2 2009, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) reported the results of examination of the storm surge flooding and the current defence capacity in the Tokyo Bay coastal area against flood tide at an expert panel on large-scale flood control measures of the central disaster management council. In its report, MLIT set up six scenarios based on objects because storm surge flooding may differ according to strength of typhoon, tide condition and so on. In addition, three of the six scenarios have been prepared to examine the influences of the sea level rise caused by global warming:

1. Case in which a strong typhoon like Typhoon Vera in 1959 (Isewan Typhoon) would attack the Tokyo Bay coastal area and the current shore protection facilities would deal with it in the higher average sea level because of global warming (based on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in 2007).
2. Case in which a super typhoon like Muroto Typhoon in 1934 would attack the Tokyo Bay coastal area and the current shore protection facilities would deal with it in the higher average sea level because of global warming (based on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in 2007).
3. Case in which a super typhoon like Muroto Typhoon in 1934 would attack the Tokyo Bay coastal area, and water gates and embankments at the zero-metre area would be damaged by floating things (based on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report in 2007).

In terms of maximum flooded areas, 16,105 hectares would be flooded for the first case; 24,619 hectares for the second case and 27,630 hectares for the third case. Then, concerning the maximum volume of flooded water, it would be 102,645,000 cubic metres for the first case; 265,492,000 cubic metres for the second case and 324,365,000 cubic metres for the third case. The report does not examine how many casualties would be because of these flood disasters. However, it is expected in the worst case that some areas such as some parts of Koto Ward in Tokyo (e.g. the Koto Ward office), Chiba city (e.g. the town hall of Chiba city), Funabashi city (e.g. the town hall of Funabashi city) and Yokohama city (e.g. Yokohama station of Japan Railways) would be flooded by 2 to 5 metres in depth at the maximum. Because these areas are overpopulated (448,325 in Koto Ward, 949,730 in Chiba city, 594,298 in Funabashi city and 3,654,429 in Yokohama city), it might be easily expected that the number of casualties would not be small.

As Japan is surrounded by the sea, ‘how to cope with problems related to sea level rise caused by global warming’ is one of the significant issues in the Japan’s adaptation strategies for global warming. However, it seems that both the Japanese Government and Japanese people have been less concerned about how to adapt to sea level rise and even sea level rise itself partly because it is not perfectly certain that the sea level would rise because of global warming and partly because if it were so it would happen in the future, not now. The world might have been obsessed with the current economic recession and less interested in global warming. Surely, our life and happiness would be important. However, it might be necessary to always consider those of the future generations. The future generations would have to live in and cope with the changed world because of global warming caused by the past and present generations. Thus, it can be suggested that the Government of every nation, especially advanced nations, has to spend money for the economic recovery into adaptation measures, making both generations happier. It is our responsibility.

©Mainichi Shinbun

Japan had the abnormally warm winter this year possibly because of global warming. According to Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), average temperatures in Japan were higher in this winter (December to February) than other years and the eastern part of Japan recorded the second highest average temperatures and the northern part recorded the third highest since 1946. Further, daylight hours on the Japan sea side of the eastern part was longest after the second world war, and the volume of snow falling was the second lowest on the Japan sea side of the northern part and the third lowest on the same side of the eastern part since 1961.

For environmentalists or possibly those who are concerned about global warming, this is a bad news. However, the thing is not so simple. Because of the warm winter, some people were happy while others were unhappy. By searching the word, Danto (warm winter), in Google (news), some Japanese were unhappy but others were happy because of Danto. Let me cite two examples.

First, as the volume of snow falling was surprisingly low and warmer weather continued in February, preventing road surface from icing, six local governments of the Suwa area in Nagano could reduce their expenses in snow clearing. Those governments welcomed the small amount of snow falling, saying ‘it is appreciated that we could reduce expenses for snow clearing’ because of their serious fiscal situation. In this February, the Suwa municipal government spent 700,000 yen for snow clearing though its spending was 5.30 million yen in February of last year. In contrast construction companies in Suwa city which contracted snow clearing works complained that they lost most of their works in this winter. According to one construction company, it annually received almost 3 to 4 million yen in the winter season from clearing snows but the amount of money it earned in this winter became a third.

Second, in Tokai area, while ski resorts lost many visitors as they ran short of snow, Higashiyama zoological park in Nagoya, AIchi and Lake Biwa in Shiga had more visitors. Higashiyama zoological park increased visitors by 45,000 compared to those of February of last year. In addition, though yacht schools in Lake Biwa had almost no customers in winter seasons, they had many customers in this winter and many visitors at Lake Biwa enjoyed yachting and wind surfing.

Though it may not be surprising, this abnormally warm winter seems favourable for some people. Clearly, most Japanese might not like the severely cold winter; in Tokyo, perhaps you could often hear people not ‘criticising’ but ‘appraising’ the warm winter. Further, some people seriously desire warmer winter and welcome global warming. Because winter in the northern part of Japan such as Hokkaido is normally very severe, it may be understandable that they hope so. Recognising abnormalities in weather seem thus insufficient to unite people to combat global warming. In order to do so, the Japanese Government must make more efforts to make people understand the necessity to combat global warming even though some of them may no longer enjoy warm winter. Currently, Japanese climate policy has less focused on making people having sufficient understandings of global warming, namely environmental education, and the Government has sought to carry out climate policy without sufficient public understandings of global warming. However, the cooperation and support of people in climate policy and sufficient understandings of global warming and climate policy may be essential in order to unite people to combat global warming and without them the Japanese Government may find difficulties in tackling global warming effectively in the near future.

©Japan Wind Consultant Corporation

On 29 September, in the Prime Minister’s general policy speech, Prime Minister Taro Asa said, ‘environmental and energy technology, in which Japan has its strength, has power to create new demand and jobs’. Then, on 6 January, the Minister of the Environment, Tetsuo Saito, proposed the creation of Green Economy and Social Change (Midori no keizai to shakai no henkaku), a framework for Japanese Green New Deal (JGND), which aims at simultaneous achievement of economic recovery/job creation and solution of environmental problems through environmental measures. Concretely, it seeks to create jobs through promotion of the development of the environment-related industry and simultaneously control CO2 emissions by encouraging investment into development and spread of energy-saving technologies and products. Further, it seeks to expand its market from 70 trillion to 100 trillion yen and create more than 80 thousand jobs. MoE said that it would form a concrete plan in cooperation with other ministries and by receiving ideas from experts and the public.

Then, on 1 March, the Ministry of the Environment (MoE) has constructed a framework for JGND. The framework proposes to create jobs and boost the economy through social capital development, consumption promotion and investment encouragement. For instance, the framework suggests that solar energy panels will be installed on public facilities, schools and government buildings. Further, it proposes that fixed price purchase system will be introduced which obligates electric power companies to purchase electricity generated by solar power, leading to decrease in costs of solar energy and the rapid spread of solar energy in the private sector. MoE will work out details of JGND and then draw up its final draft within March.

As JGND seeks to shape the future Japanese economy and the society (FJES), the Government should display its clear vision of FJES and the success of JGND may depend on the wider social consensus on how FJES should be. However, the Government seemingly has failed to display it so far and there has been no wider social consensus on FJES. Major opposition parties also have failed to display their own vision of FJES. Thus, the insufficient degree of discussion among the society has been done.

Indeed, even within the Government, there has not been a clear vision or consensus of FJES. Indeed, when the Minister of the Environment Saito submitted the MoE’s policy proposal to the Prime Minister Aso on 6 January 2009, Aso told him ‘it became shabby because it was examined only within MoE’ and rejected it and ordered him to cooperate with other ministries. Though MoE examined the ideas about JGND provided by the public, experts and local government leaders, it seems that MoE has not (or has been unable to) sufficiently and effectively discussed it with other ministries. According to the senior official of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE), which is an affiliated agency of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), ‘regarding JGND, MoE has told nothing to ANRE and we do not need to tell MoE anything about it.’ Contrarily, on 13 January, ANRE established a new apartment for new energy society system which aims at job creation and realisation of new energy and energy-savings measures in cooperation with other ministries. Because METI and ANRE have strong connections with industry and deal with economic issues and policies, JGND of MoE must be hardly successful unless they are closely involved into its decision-making process. In addition, although JGND must be highly significant for the Japan’s future, the public may be less familiar with JGND. Thus, MoE needs to try harder to let JGND well known and create a wide range of opportunities for public participation.

JGND must be a grand idea. However, unlike ‘ordinary’ economic or environmental policy, if Japan took the wrong direction, Japan would no longer be a leading country in political, economic and environmental respects. As MoE could not take the responsibility for such consequence, JGND must be carefully and sufficiently discussed by all components of the society, because the Japanese society as a whole needs to take the responsibility.