Is Japan embracing a solar future in the post-Fukushima era?
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Is Japan embracing a solar future in the postFukushima era? By Eva Karatairi Feature Editors Benjamin McLellan and Zhang Qi
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he great earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011 in Japan not only disabled the power supply and cooling systems of three Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, they also damaged a half-century old national nuclear program. After the accident, with the nuclear reactors out of action, the Japanese government started considering power policies in which the role of nuclear energy was severely reduced—the first time in nearly 60 years. Coal, oil, and natural gas imports skyrocketed, permitting a stable electric supply, but at the same time causing rising CO2 emissions and electricity prices for private consumers and businesses. Alternative energy source technologies were acknowledged as substantial contributors to the effort against climate change in the Japanese Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), said Charikleia Karakosta, an expert in energy-environmental and climate policy decisions from the National Technical Universtiy of Athens. INDC is a national voluntary pledge, in which renewables
are projected to comprise 22–24% of the electricity generation, with almost 7% of it expected to be derived from solar energy. After the disaster, a number of public and private bodies engaged in alternative energy were settled in Japan. The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology established the Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute, which opened in April 2014 to promote R&D into renewable energy. The Renewable Energy Institute (REI), a private organization and think tank, was created to support public awareness and policies for the establishment of a society based on renewables. Mika Ohbayashi, director at the REI in Tokyo, regards the government’s targets as “clearly too low,’’ and she thinks the expansion dynamic of renewables is underestimated. Based on REI reports, the share of renewables, including hydro, in electricity production reached approximately 21% in May 2016. Ohbayashi’s annual prediction is that this percentage will stabilize around 16%. There are good reasons behind the optimism, as there are still almost 15 years for the goal to be reached. Development of the solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass energy market was significant after the accident. In 2015, Japan was third among the G20 in clean energy investments, attracting USD$36.2 billion for alternatives. Eighty-eight percent of these investments went to small-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) projects, according to the United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP’s) 10th “Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016,” by the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. But the sky over Japan’s renewable future has some dark clouds. ‘’Challenges depend on the types of renewables,’’ said professor Michihisa Koyama, Unit Leader at the INAMORI Frontier Research Centre of Kyushu University in Japan. Koyama believes
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