business

Japan counts on Asian market to help shift to green energy

14 Comments
By YURI KAGEYAMA

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14 Comments
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Nuclear power, hydrogen and ammonia are indeed realistic options. Unicorn tears are unrealistic.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Two years ago, the lead would have read, "Japan is focusing on its neighbors in Asia as it hopes to sell them coal-fired power plants."

Japan is hardly a role model. Its mismanaged and crippled nuclear power sector, its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and uninterest in geothermal.

"That would mean a bigger market in that sector, which Japan sees as critical...."

This what it's all about.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

I don't know who sets Japan's energy policy, but Japan is a FOLLOWER, not a leader, in green energy.

Who leads Solar Panel? China.

Who leads EV batter? Korea.

Who leads Hydrogen? Korea(Sorry, Toyota is several years behind Korea now)

Who leads Fusion? Korea.

There is absolutely no green energy technology that Japan can sell to its Asian neighbors; rather Japan's Asian neighbors see Japan as a market to tap instead.

I will give you an example. Mazda just unveiled its first EV MX-30 in the US a couple days ago and was laughed at by the press; a 100 mile range EV in the era of 250 mile range EV at similar prices? What's Mazda thinking? But this was an all Japan EV with all major component from Japanese suppliers, and this was the best Japan could come up with, which happens to be 5 years behind the EV battery market leader Koreans and 250 ~ 300 mile range EVs powered by Korean batteries.

So how do you know Korean batteries are the best? Because Rolls-Royce and Ferrari use Korean batteries for their EVs.

1 ( +6 / -5 )

“China was invited but is not taking part, citing the recent national holidays.”

Gold. Or wants nothing to do with Japans initiatives for anything. They call the shots remember.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

The meeting was held online because of COVID-19 restrictions. 

I mean, this is good but shouldn't it always be held online for...environmental reasons? Given the nature of the conference and all.

It is a good initiative, and anything to encourage more countries to move towards green energy alternatives is great. I just don't see Japan as a leader in this space, they are pretty late to the transition. Which itself is not necessarily that bad, not every country can pioneer the technology.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

There is absolutely no green energy technology that Japan can sell to its Asian neighbors; rather Japan's Asian neighbors see Japan as a market to tap instead.

You are absolutely right. Just take the solar panels for example, Japan now mostly produces 390W type, while Thailand and Malaysia produce 450W type, and Vietnam starts producing 600W type.

Japan used to rule the solar panel industry, and now they can't even catch up. Japan is now totally non-existent in this field except for Sharp which is owned by Taiwan.

-5 ( +0 / -5 )

Ok, I get that Japan wants to be green at the moment, but as someone who doesn’t drive a car, why should I pay the same amount of green tax as a guy driving a mazarati? If you want green tax, tax people using unnecessarily big cars in Tokyo..

1 ( +1 / -0 )

the only meaningful renewable energy for japan to exploit is offshore wind using floating wind turbines. but even that is years away from hapenning. Scotland has beaten japan on that front with their first floating wind farm that tapped into the UK grid.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

At the time of this comment, the UK is generating 20% of its electricity from wind.

And 17% of that comes out of Boris Johnson's mouth.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

So, has Japan sorted out its site, infrastructure, financing and staffing for long term (multiple generation) storage of nuclear waste then? I'm shocked that this wasn't reported in the media.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The future of green energy lies in, quite ironically, Russia and China, two of the worst polluting countries, becuase they are the only ones pushing ahead with research, developement and commercialisation of generation 4 reactor concepts such as sodium-cooled fast reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

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