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.