Japan's versatility of renewable energy as a real wildcard for energy production

Since the 2011 disaster, Japan’s nuclear power program, which had provided about 30% of the country’s electricity, has ground to a halt amid public anxiety over safety, and the country has had to fill much of the gap by burning fossil fuels, taking a look back into late 90s energy production strategies.

            The government has been trying for months to get the public consensus before turning some reactors back on, but so far its assurances that new, tighter regulations will keep the plants safe have not convinced many Japanese, on the contrary to what lobby’s argue as a symptom of losing competitivty in the international market, where there has been an increasing necessity to buy materials for burning fossil fuels. In 2013, Japan released the equivalent of 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, more than 7% higher than the year preceding the nuclear accident and 14% higher than levels in 1990.

In 2011, Japan was the world’s fifth-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, the United States, India and Russia. Together, these countries and the European Union account for about 70% of total global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States. Japan had been reluctant in pursuing renewable energy, choosing instead to rely on its reactors to avoid greenhouse emissions. As a result, before the accident, less than 3% of the electricity Japan generated came from renewable energy sources.

To commence its renewable power program, Japan introduced incentives to diversify its energy sources last year. In the program’s first 12 months, through June, the country added renewable power equal to the output of about four nuclear reactors.

Japan’s new target assumes that the country will achieve energy savings of about 20% by investing in renewable energy sources and energy-efficient technology. Japan seeks to reduce emissions from 2005 levels by 3.8%. Japan’s nuclear reactors around the country were shut down for regular maintenance after the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi spewed radioactive materials over northeastern Japan, but the government did not count on the antinuclear feelings that greeted its attempts to try to restart them. Now, the necessity to implement renewable energy systems urges while Kyoto Protocol top emissions limit are not meet and the dependence on foreign materials to produce energy alerts its government.

Japan’s environment minister, Nobuteru Ishihara, said that the new target “does not consider the possible effect of nuclear power plants reducing emissions” and that Japan “would set a more definite target” once it settled on what sources of energy it would use in the future.

For this reason, Martin Kaiser, head of the Greenpeace delegation affirmed that “Japan can get dramatic emission reductions while shutting down nuclear entirely,” Greenpeace said its own calculations showed Japan could achieve emissions cuts of more than 20" without relying on nuclear power if it more aggressively pursued renewable energy.

In conclusion, those countries which were already transitioning into renewable energy sources do not solely depend on autonomous independent sources of energy production, but rather can diversify its energy production promoting its results. As a consequence, their dependence to foreign markets tends to zero while their know-how continues to advance where the versatility of merging renewable sources with other's production themes could be of intangible benefit for the society, in terms of economic advance as well as prosperity for the nation, defining a future strategy opting for the best model of energy production once different techniques have been evidenced.

Read More

Measuring the power of energy from a different point of view: Tax Breaks in a fresh market

The unlimited possibilities for a company deciding to enter in an early stage of a market which is still under-going a process of configuration and direction is promoted where there are weaker companies. This position is even strengthen where these ones do not process or enjoy the same know how, causing a burst in benefits in the middle and long term. 

What else can a company achieve?

In a rapidly expanding market as it is the energetic one, those companies who have decided to invest in it are not simply seeking a market dominant position: their real desire lies within building the image of a trustworthy company that looks for clean and renewable friendly energies as the chosen future source of growth. Even deeper than this, as a result of the former, and what mostly attracts powerful investors to its configuration are the tax breaks produced.

As a clear example, we can examine the past buyout of Google. The company announced that it had signed a contract to buy the entire output of the 239.2 MW Happy Hereford wind farm that is being developed by Chermac Energy.  The project is expected to begin operation in late 2014.

Undoubtedly, Google is pleased with all the favorable publicity the company has received for being so environmentally committed. They even boast their green projects:

 “For transparency’s sake, we’re also reporting our footprint without those purchases. We urge others to do the same, which is why we participate in the World Resources Institute Scope 2 accounting process,” Nickerman explains. “This helps to ensure greenhouse gas reporting remains transparent and meaningful.”

The media has also reported Google’s funding are:

“Incredible awesome and seek the future tools for promoting green energy”

However, those who praise and thank Google for adopting a green politic are what Google knows for being here in the other flip of the coin

A point that none of the media stories have mentioned will be, amongst others, that taxpayers will have to cover the cost of the tax breaks that the wind farm owner, namely Google, will enjoy. 

The most lucrative USA tax break for the project owners will probably be the federal wind production tax credit (PTC).  This tax break will provide the owners with a tax credit, currently set at $0.023, for each kilowatt-hour of electricity that the “wind farm” produces during the first 10 years of operation.

Also, the wind farm owners will likely qualify for another lucrative federal tax break known as “accelerated depreciation” which allows the owners to depreciate for tax purposes the entire capital cost of the wind energy equipment over a 5-year period, thus providing a significant cash flow benefit.

The actual cost of the PTC to taxpayers can only be estimated at this time since the amount paid depends on the amount of electricity produced as well as the rate at the time of production. 

To sum up, Google will not only cause a positive impact in global society as a influential company supporting green energies, but meanwhile in the back door will higher its benefits as a result of the difference between what these wind mills will produce and the tax breaks.  

Name it marketing or company politics, energy is not only positive for the world's future survival, but as a tool to exploit its market eccentricities. As such, these advantages will be normalized once the market stops it swerve.

Read More

Understanding why green energy development is bound to that of the legal sector

While we could refer to energy as an abstract or technical term, it is relevant to understand the concept of energy from a social-welfare meter which quantifies how much progress is being made under the renewable field. Now, while green energy can be seen as the set of opportunities a country aims to achieve in their territory by using original and newly developed techniques, there is something in addition to political will to make it feasible to replace common energy production techniques: legal framework. How are different countries starting to invest on green energy?

Under the 21th Century premises, where economical advance is still by far more relevant than social or environmental welfare, numerous shifts in policy making are taking place. Such is the relevance of these, that they are not only causing a disruption in economic affaires but do affect the way we conceal society, education and international relations between States and investors. Why is this happening?

When we introduce a new variable to an stable equation, namely the needs to build a strong economy, which is based in the quantity of goods able to produce and under certain requisites, when we add to those requisites the demands and needs of the earth we are living in we find a completely transformed panorama: environmental resilience and anti-jeopardizing politics in the environment do cause a significance impact in the quantity of goods able to be produced under newly fresh legal imposed requisites.

As a consequence, numerous scientists are aware of this premises and are coming up with different solutions to include the variable of the environment within the ownings of the economic progress: energy.

Points of connection between energy and its relevance in the configuration of quantity of goods:

• Versatility.
• Promotion around the necessity to conceal 21th Century technology with 21th Century economic advance, requiring a 21st Century legal framework to work on.

As a consequence of the above, should countries be willing to develop the energy market by incorporating green friendly energy transformations, it is conditio sine qua non to start by upgrading the legislation so as to incorporate a clear threeshold where the set of energy policies to be real and makeable.

Read More

Is there a variable between economic growth and green energy development?

Yes, there is: by investing in a new energy model, new opportunities to grow, develop and investigation arise. The connection of these means growing in competivity as a nation which seeks new sources of energy as an evidence of the sought adaptability to the 21st Century in terms of fighting against scarcity of important energy sources such as carbon and petrol.

However, the quest for finding points of connection between environmental resilience and economic development have not been positively addressed yet in a century where this divergence continues to recede. As a result, progressively challenges arise and threaten to affect humanity survivability by hindering one of the two. What the common sense proposes under this adverse reality is to build a model of governance which manages somehow to tackle these two elements in a conciliatory manner.

What I propose regarding this dichotomy is to build an open variety of possibilities regarding a green model of governance, offering a development to countries by implementing a revolutionary and prosperous framework by constituting a new way of dealing with social, political, and economic drawbacks such as unemployment rates, scarce resources, and lack of leadership in governance, by promoting natural resource resilience. This would mean bringing natural resources into the same level of relevance than economic profit. As a consequence of doing so, light has been shed into the fact that the possibilities for understanding and dealing with challenges has resulted innovative, yet revolutionary profitable. 

It is within the dimension of natural resource governability that numerous possibilities arise towards facing new challenges of the 21st Century that affect countries and the Earth as a whole that the economy dimension is not able to generate on its own

Read More