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Japan’s ambitious carbon target sparks bureaucratic panic

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When Yoshihide Suga committed By reducing Japan’s carbon emissions by 2030, the prime minister gave a warm welcome to world leaders at Joe Biden’s climate summit. But his predictions created panic throughout the Japanese bureaucracy.

Making policies in Japan usually involves a slow and painful process of reaching consensus. This time, however, Suga set the goal – a 46 percent reduction From 2013 levels to 2030 – without consultation, even a small political debate and analysis to suggest this is not possible.

Officials are in a hurry to turn the new target into a concrete policy, with experts clearly questioning its credibility and warning that the Japanese public will not prepare the sacrifices it will require.

In comments that were seen as symbolic of the government’s lack of planning, Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi sparked criticism and social media ridicule when he told a TV program that the figure had “just risen” by 46 percent.

“The government is completely confused,” said a member of the advisory board tasked with designing the national energy strategy. “Japan has done nothing to prepare for that.”

The snake has since made climate change and the promise of “green growth” the focus of his government he took office last September. In October, Japan promised to achieve clean carbon emissions by 2050.

Yoshihide Suga imposed no political debate or consultation © Yuichi Yamazaki / Reuters

But the new target has caused seriousness because it is immediate. Japan had previously promised a 26 percent reduction by 2030 compared to 2013. Rising to 46 percent requires a huge additional reduction in emissions in nine years.

Taishi Sugiyama, research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, said a new goal can be achieved if Japan supports the great success of its economy. A 1 percent reduction in emissions costs about 1 tn ($ 9.2 billion) a year, he said, so a 20-point reduction would cost 20 tn.

That’s the equivalent of about 3.5 percent of gross domestic product. This means that the carbon target for 2030 would account for a large part of the lifestyle improvement that Japan’s low-growth economy can expect.

Takeo Kikkawa, a professor at Japan International University and a member of the government’s energy council, said the 46 percent goal is welcome in itself. “The issue is that before the targets were so low, this is unrealistic,” he said.

By 2030, Japan should consider buying emission permits from other countries, Kikkua said. But, he added, “we can accelerate and still achieve a net zero of 2050.”

Efforts to reduce Japan’s carbon emissions have been halted Fukushima nuclear disaster In 2011, after dismantling three reactors, Japan shut down the rest of its nuclear fleet and burned coal and fuel oil instead.

This led Japan to change the accounting year for reducing emissions to 2013 in the Paris Agreement, which provided a key basis for work instead of the Kyoto Protocol in 1990.

The easiest way to reduce emissions would be to restart Japan’s nuclear reactors. “But even if they restart all of them, they can’t reduce emissions enough,” Sugiyama said.

Nuclear is also very unfamiliar to the Japanese public. The government is not pushing for a restart or discussing replacing existing reactors at the end of working life.

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The environment wants high growth in renewables, which in 2019 was about 6% of Japan’s energy supply. Renewable output has almost tripled since the Fukushima disaster, but Japan’s mountainous geography makes it difficult to build large solar and wind farms.

Therefore, many experts set expectations for renewable energy imports ammonia or hydrogen, generated using renewable energy in countries such as Australia, and then burned using the natural gas and coal infrastructure in Japan. However, these renewable fuel supplies do not yet exist.

Most of Japan’s emissions policies have operated through regulations on power companies, along with access tariffs for solar energy. The Liberal Democratic Party in government is debating the use of emissions trading or carbon tax, but powerful Japanese industrialists oppose policies that would make energy more expensive.

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