Mark Pendergrast: Japan's eco-revolution runs out of steam - National Post

By Mark Pendergrast

Japanese trains run to the minute, and 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 60% of their food.

That may be changing in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Maybe. Japan is at a crucial tipping point. As an island nation, it offers a microcosmic look at the economic and environmental problems facing the rest of the globe. And as Japan tips, so may the world.

I landed in Tokyo’s Narita Airport on May 11, 2011, exactly two months after the magnitude 9.0 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami wave that killed an estimated 20,500 people and left a swath of destruction up to nine kilometres inland. That zone included the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, where the loss of electric power led to a full meltdown of three out of six reactors (three reactors that did not meltdown have gone offline and are unlikely to return to service).

In the same way that we now refer to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, simply as “9/11,” the Japanese shorthand for March 11, 2011, the day of their triple disaster, is “3/11.”

Before 3/11, I had been invited to visit several of Japan’s 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. Indeed, during my six-week odyssey, I 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, overall, I realized that I had been naive. The Eco-Model City program was thrown together in a hurry so that then-prime minister Yasuo Fukuda could announce it at the G8 summit held in Japan in July 2008, and the cities received very little funding. They are doing some interesting piecemeal things, but not enough.

Japan is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. As an industrialized island nation, it is facing the same issues as the rest of the globe, only sooner and more urgently. Yet it lags far behind Europe, the United States and even (in some respects) China in terms of renewable energy efforts. Photovoltaic panels receive the only current federal subsidy. And Japan is mired in bureaucracy, political in-fighting, indecision, puffery, public apathy and cultural attitudes that make rapid change difficult.

But Japan does need to take urgent action. Japan is heavily dependent on nuclear energy, which since the meltdowns has become politically toxic. Plans, announced in 2010, to increase Japan’s reliance on nuclear power have been scrapped, and on top of the three reactors that were lost at Fukushima, five others have been shutdown for safety reasons. 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. Iida sees Japan’s nuclear power and fossil fuel use gradually dwindling to nothing by 2050, while renewable energy swells to account for 50% of current use. The other 50% will be covered by energy savings and efficiencies, he says.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan has apparently been listening to Iida and is now a born-again renewable energy advocate. Yet because of political in-fighting and a looming no-confidence vote, Kan announced that he will resign soon, the sixth Japanese prime minister to do so in six years. He says he won’t go until the parliament votes for renewable energy subsidies for wind, biomass, geothermal, solar hot water, micro-hydro, but the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) really run the country, in league with the electricity monopolies. METI has funded a program to dabble in smart grid technology in four test cities, but Japan needs a drastic overhaul of its electric grid and massive support for renewable energy. Even in the aftermath of catastrophe, though, it still seems to be business as usual for Japan’s political and industrial leaders.

Japan is better positioned than any country in the world to adopt renewable, sustainable development policies. The trouble it is having overcoming its own existing habits, despite the ample reason to push ahead post-3/11, is cause for concern.

National Post

Mark Pendergrast is the author of Inside the Outbreaks and other books. He is writing a book called Japan’s Tipping Point.

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