MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th June, 2019) About 100 local residents holding signs and banners, demanding that the Japanese government stop increasing coal-fired power plants staged demonstrations outside a planned coal power plant in Yokosuka, located south of Tokyo, on Wednesday.
Simultaneous protests also took place on Wednesday outside Japanese embassies in nearby countries, such as Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines, which similarly called on the Japanese government to stop financing coal-powered energy projects abroad.
Organizers of the demonstrations said they planned to stage more protests on Thursday and Friday in Osaka, where Japan is expected to host the G20 summit from June 28-29, and Kobe. Their hope is to raise awareness about Japan's controversial energy policy to refocus on fossil fuels such as coal in response to energy shortages caused by the shutdown of nuclear power plants in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
"Today, we just finished with the actions [demonstrations] in Yokosuka, where one of the largest coal power plants is planned to be built. Currently, 17 coal power plants are under construction in Japan. Those will be starting operations between next year and 2025. Those are all future projects. That's why we're all so angry about it," Kimiko Hirata, international director of Kiko Network, a climate change-focused Japanese NGO that jointly organized Wednesday's demonstrations, told Sputnik.
A powerful earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011 caused three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to meltdown, leading to massive evacuations and periodic blackouts in neighboring areas. In response, the Japanese government decided to shut down all nuclear power plants in the country.
According to the 2019 Energy White Paper from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan, only nine out of Japan's 57 nuclear reactors have resumed operation after being cleared inspections confirming they meet the new regulatory safety standards. As such, nuclear power's contribution to the nation's power grid decreased from 11.2 percent in 2010 to less than one percent in 2017, the paper said.
Hirata noted that Japanese authorities decided to turn to coal to make up for the power generation losses caused by the shutdown of nuclear power plants and questioned whether such moves were necessary.
"After the nuclear accident in 2011, there were 15 new coal power plants planned. The existing coal fleet is about 100 [plants]. So it's like a 15 percent increase. It's a dramatic increase, because the government changed several policies to incentivize new coal power plants' construction. However, whether that many new coal power plants are needed is a big question. Right after the Fukushima accident, we did experience blackouts. But since then, we haven't experienced any blackouts. Renewable energy is also becoming cheaper. There's a big question mark on whether we need that many new coal power plants," she said.
According to the white paper, coal's contribution to the nation's electricity generation jumped from 22.7 percent in 2010 to 25.2 percent in 2017, while renewable energy sources, excluding hydro and nuclear power, contributed to 7.6 percent of the nation's power generation in 2017.
Nevertheless, the environmental activist acknowledged that it would take a few years before renewable energy sources could become economically competitive against fossil fuels.
"Prices for renewable energy sources are dropping in Japan. But the pace is not fast enough when compared to situations in other countries. Under the current situation, coal is still cheap than renewable energy sources. It is projected that around 2025 renewable energy costs would be cheaper than coal in Japan. But that's another several years to come. Do we still have to wait for another five years? That allows the companies to go for construction of new coal power plants," she said.
While other G20 nations did not face similar energy supply crises as Japan did, most of them struggled to fulfill the pledge they made in 2009 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies in the medium term, according to a report from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), an independent think tank based in the United Kingdom.
According to the ODI report, released on Tuesday, the G20 continued to provide at least $63.9 billion each year during the 2016-2017 period to support the production and consumption of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. Meanwhile, about 75 percent of the annual subsidies from G20 nations went toward supporting coal-fired power production.
One of the scientists who took part in research for the ODI report pointed out that subsidies from the G20 for coal-fired power plants almost tripled in the past three years.
"The total number [for subsidies] was about $64 billion to both [coal] consumers and producers. That's the annual average between 2016 and 2017 in all G20 countries. It's for both mining and coal power [plants]. But the biggest chunk of it is for coal power, about $47 billion. We have been doing this exercise for several years. Our previous report was looking at data from three years ago on annual average from 2013 to 2014. At that time, it was $17 billion. The amount of support for coal power plants almost tripled, definitely more than doubled," Ivetta Gerasimchuk, the lead for Sustainable Energy Supplies at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in Geneva, Switzerland, told Sputnik.
Similar to Japan, many other G20 countries continued to rely on fossil fuel such as coal, oil or natural gas because renewable energy was still not as economically competitive. But Gerasimchuk argued that the idea that renewable energy was more expensive than fossil fuel was more like a myth because prices for renewable energy had gone down significantly in recent years.
"If we look at the switch of government support from fossil fuel to renewable energy, India has made a lot of progress. The cost of renewable energy in India is so low that it doesn't require subsidies. It's a very positive story on that front. We need to make renewable energy cheap enough. It has happened in India already. There're a lot of myths about renewable energy. Some people still think renewable energy is expensive, which is not true. If you look at the cost of renewable energy, it has decreased very substantially, depending on the country," she said.
According to the latest report from IISD on India's energy transition, prices for electricity generated by solar and wind have become cheaper than coal-generated electricity.
"The most dramatic recent changes have been grid-scale wind and solar power becoming cost-competitive. In a September 2018 auction by the Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd. (SECI), solar tariffs fell to the lowest level to date: INR [Indian Rupee] 2.44 [$0.04] per kWh [kilowatt hour]. In auctions held in August 2018, wind tariffs reached INR 2.77-2.83 per kWh. At these rates, renewable compare very favorably relative with coal power tariffs, which average at INR 3-5 per kWh for domestic coal and at INR 5-6 per kWh for imported coal," the report said.
Despite government subsidies allocated to support traditional coal mining industries and aid workers who could be affected by the shutdown of coal mines, the inefficiency of coal as an energy source makes it impossible for countries such as the United States to save coal mining jobs, Gerasimchuk suggested.
"For example, in the United States, the coal industry was struggling before [the 2016 US presidential] elections. [Donald] Trump, when he was a presidential candidate, he promised to keep jobs in coal county and they all voted for Trump. But what happened after was the industry continued to struggle, no matter what he promised, jobs were cut," she said.
The expert argued that it was better to prepare to phase out this fading industry and offer workers adequate transitional support.
"The problem in this approach is that if you promise something like this and you can't deliver your promise, you don't have backup plans for the workers and the communities. They don't have transition support. If you recognize this is a fading industry, we need a plan and we need just transition for the workers, it's a difficult decision to take, but the workers can get the support they serve," she said.
Nevertheless, the expert warned that transitions away from fossil fuel such as oil and gas could cause disruptions in global energy supply and political stability since major fossil fuel producers such as countries in the middle East would have to make plans to prepare for reduced global demand for their key energy exports.
