From: Bill Totten
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 5:01 PM
Japan at Critical Tipping Point
by Mark Pendergrast
Special to The
country's businesses pride themselves on energy-efficiency. The Japanese
boast of their eco-services for eco-products in eco-cities. Yet they
rely primarily on imported fossil fuel and nuclear power, live in
energy-wasteful homes, and import sixty percent of their food. That may
be changing in the wake of the
microcosmic look at the problems facing the rest of the globe, including
peak oil and climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions. And as
Japan tips, so may the world.
I landed at Narita airport on May 11 2011, two months after the
magnitude 9.0 Great Eastern
tsunami that killed an estimated 20,500 people on the coast of
northeastern
ten kilometers inland. That zone included the Fukushima Number One
nuclear power plant, where a loss of electric power led to a full
meltdown of three out of six reactors.
In the same way that people in the
attacks of September 11 2001, simply as "9/11", the Japanese shorthand
for March 11, the day of their triple disaster, is "3/11".
Before 3/11, as an American writer I had been awarded an Abe Fellowship
for Journalists to visit five out of thirteen so-called Eco-Model
Cities. I figured that because the Japanese import virtually all of
their fossil fuel and are technologically sophisticated, that they must
be doing innovative things with renewable energy.
And indeed, during my six-week odyssey, which took me to
Eco-Model Cities of
saw solar panels, micro-hydro generators, wind turbines, electric
vehicles, hydrogen power, biodiesel, wood-pellet factories, compost made
from human excrement, geothermal systems, and model sustainable homes.
But ... I had been naive. The
in a hurry so that then-Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda could announce it at
the Group of Eight summit held in
received very little funding. They are doing some interesting piecemeal
things, but not enough.
in terms of renewable energy efforts. Currently only photovoltaic panels
receive a central government subsidy. And
political infighting, indecision, puffery, public apathy, and cultural
attitudes that make rapid change difficult.
Yet
friendly, resilient people who can, when motivated, pull together to
accomplish incredible things. I happened to land there at a crucial time
for
policy and entire future. It could show the way to create an
ecologically sustainable world and, in the process, rejuvenate its
economy. In a way,
an industrialized island nation, it is facing the same issues as the
rest of the globe, only sooner and more urgently.
In 2010,
imported fossil fuels: 45 percent oil, nineteen percent coal and
fourteen percent natural gas. Nuclear power accounted for fifteen
percent and renewable energy seven percent. Almost all of that small
renewable share came from large hydropower dams built a half century
ago. In 2010, the Japanese government announced plans to build fourteen
more nuclear reactors to boost the country's nuclear share of electrical
generation to fifty percent .
Now that plan has been scrapped. In addition to the
the Hamaoka nuclear power plant's five reactors, which are located near
a fault line 201 kilometers southwest of
have also been closed. So what will happen next?
Tetsunari Iida, the former nuclear engineer who heads the Tokyo-based
Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP), has a plan. Formerly a
lone voice crying in the wilderness against nuclear power, he is now a
media star and consultant to the country's leaders. Iida sees
nuclear power and fossil fuel use gradually dwindling to nothing by
2050, while renewable energy swells to account for fifty percent of
current use. The other fifty percent will be covered by energy savings
and efficiencies, he says.
Prime Minister Naoto
now a born-again renewable energy advocate. Yet because of political
in-fighting and a looming no-confidence vote,
resign soon - the sixth Japanese prime minister to do so in six years He
says he won't go until the Diet votes for renewable energy subsidies for
wind, biomass, geothermal, solar hot water, micro-hydro and so forth.
But the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry
(METI) really run the country, in league with the electricity monopolies.
Each of the ten regional utilities jealously guards its borders, so that
there is limited cooperation between them, and they don't like the
fluctuating levels of renewable energy. Worse still, the northeastern
half of
at sixty hertz, making it impossible to share power between them without
huge transformers.
METI has funded a program to dabble in smart-grid technology in four
test cities, but
massive support for renewable energy. Building codes and renovations
must support well-insulated homes styled after traditional machiya, with
natural ventilation. Home gardens and large-scale greenhouses need to
provide more domestic food.
Fallow rice paddies can grow abundant strains for bioethanol. Rural
inhabitants could heat with wood. The country could take advantage of
its huge untapped potential for geothermal and wind power. And surely
its electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids could predominate.
The whole world is watching
hope that we see a true eco-model country rising from the nuclear
meltdowns and devastation.
_____
Mark Pendergrast is the author of Inside the Outbreaks (2010) and other
books. He is writing a book called "
can be reached through www.markpendergrast.com.
(c) All rights reserved
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/eo20110817a1.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+japantimes_news+%28The+Japan+Times+Headline+News+-+News+%26+Business%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click
the appropriate link at the top or bottom of
http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/japan-at-critical-tipping-point/
_______________________________________________
Rad-Green mailing list
Rad-Green@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 10.0.1392 / Virus Database: 1520/3841 - Release Date: 08/17/11
No comments:
Post a Comment