Japan’s climate policy in light of COP26

25 November 2021

At the latest UN Climate Conference, COP26 in Glasgow, Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida announced that Tokyo would increase its funding to help other countries, especially in Asia, reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. Despite these announcements, Japan’s position in international climate politics was subject to criticism. On 2 November, the day of Kishida’s speech, Japan received the Fossil of the Day Award for “doing the most to do the least” by the Climate Action Network.

What is it about Japan’s climate policy that warrants such criticism? The long and the short of it is that Japan’s climate policy strategy exhibits a high degree of continuity in times of a “widespread, rapid, and intensifying” climate crisis that calls for transformative policies.

Ramping up ambition, but lagging on implementation

But the good news first. There have been several positive developments in recent years, especially under Kishida’s predecessor Suga Yoshihide. In 2020, the Suga government announced the goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. This year, after US President Joe Biden called on Japan to set an ambitious and concrete mid-term emission reduction target, Suga announced at the Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021 that Japan would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 46 per cent by 2030 compared to 2013 levels. When leaders announce such targets, there are always fears that they are in fact empty promises. Showing commitment, Japan enshrined its carbon neutrality goal as a basic principle in its main climate legislation, the Act on Promotion of Global Warming Countermeasures, and included it in its newest national climate action plan, called Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in UN-jargon.

There is a striking disconnect between Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets on the one hand and the energy strategy adopted to achieve them.

Interestingly, Suga broke with Japan’s traditionally used ‘bottom-up’ approach for setting Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. Previous mitigation targets had been the sum of ambitions communicated by different industry sectors, hence bottom-up, rather than the government setting a target that the different sectors needed to achieve. This time, the Suga administration announced the 2030 target without prior industry consultations. As a result of this new approach, Japan found itself in a position where it had a more ambitious target but no policies yet to achieve it.

The need to devise ways to substantially reduce Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions influenced deliberations over Japan’s Basic Energy Plan, underway at the time PM Suga announced the new 2030 target. The preamble of the Basic Energy Plan states that “the key theme is to show the path of the energy policy to realise carbon neutrality by 2050 (announced in October 2020) and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 46% in FY 2030 from its FY 2013 levels” (emphasis in the original). Accordingly, the Basic Energy Plan published in October contains a higher share of low-carbon energy sources of almost 60 per cent by 2030. Concretely, it aims to generate 36-38 per cent of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030, up from 22-24 per cent in the previous Basic Energy Plan of 2018. Another 20-22 per cent of electricity in 2030 is supposed to come from nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power has long been a mainstay in Japan’s climate policy and is still touted as a cheap way to achieve emission reductions touted as a cheap and easy way to achieve emission reductions. Currently, however, only ten (out of 36) commercial nuclear plants are in operation. To achieve the abovementioned target, all 36 will need to be in operation. The government hopes to restart nuclear power plants that have remained idle after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident in 2011. However, it is far from clear whether it will be able to achieve this, as the government struggles to restart nuclear power plants and is unlikely to achieve the envisioned share of nuclear in its electricity mix. Unless the expansion of renewable energy progresses faster than planned for the updated 2030 goal, nuclear power might well become the Achilles’ heel of Japan’s electricity decarbonisation plans. The more the government bets on nuclear power without the ability to implement such policies, the larger the risk that it will have to fill an eventual gap in electricity generation with fossil fuels, such as coal and oil — just like it did in the years immediately following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

Another pillar of Japan’s climate policy has been coal. This might seem surprising given that coal power is the largest single source of greenhouse gasses and, therefore, a major driver of climate change. Japan, however, has long promoted so-called “clean coal” as a solution, for example in the Japan-United States Strategic Energy Partnership (JUSEP) announced in 2017. This refers to more efficient new-generation coal power plants that will use (not yet market-ready) carbon capture and storage technology in the future. The Basic Energy Plan plans for a 19 per cent share of coal in the 2030 electricity mix, down from 32 per cent in 2019, according to International Energy Agency data. According to the most recent G7 Coal Report by E3G, Japan is also the only G7 country currently constructing new coal power plants and last in line among the G7 efforts to phase out coal power generation.

Japan’s unwillingness to let go of coal was evident also at COP26 in Glasgow. During the first week, about 40 countries signed the Global Coal to Clean Power Transition Statement. Stating that “coal power generation is the single biggest cause of global temperature increases”, signatories commit to phasing out coal power plants by the 2030s (advanced economies) and the 2040s (rest of the world). Japan, however, refused to sign the statement. The decision adopted at COP26, the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact, includes language calling on states to “phasedown unabated coal”, which refers to coal power plants without carbon capture and storage technology. Despite Japan’s coal power plants lacking such technology, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno stated that Japan’s plans to produce almost twenty per cent of its electricity from coal in 2030 were in line with the Glasgow Climate Pact.

Going forward

There is a striking disconnect between Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets on the one hand and the energy strategy adopted to achieve them. An important step would be to reduce Japan’s reliance on coal, the single biggest cause of climate change. This would require an increase in other electricity sources to make up for closed coal power plants. In fact, the Basic Energy Plan explicitly states that the target of 36-38 per cent for 2030 does not represent a cap and that the government aims at a higher share should these targets be achieved early. Rather than such lukewarm support, a much higher and more ambitious renewable energy target for 2030 is needed.

There have been some positive developments: the announced increase in funding for developing countries, more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, and plans for a higher share of renewable energy by 2030. On the flip side, Japan’s climate policy continues to rest on nuclear despite the government struggling to implement this policy and on coal despite it being a powerful driver of climate change. Unless Japan can ramp up its renewable electricity capacity much more quickly than spelt out in the newest Basic Energy Plan, the risk remains that Japan is talking the international climate leadership talk without walking the necessary energy transition walk.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Florentine Koppenborg is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Public Policy at the Technical University of Munich. Her research interests are within the area of energy and climate policy, particularly energy transitions (Energiewende) and interactions with climate policy. She has authored several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on Japan’s nuclear energy and climate policy. Image credit: WIkimedia.