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Could a US-Japan “Green Alliance” Transform the Climate-Energy Equation?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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US President Barack Obama's April 23-25 visit to Japan unfortunately went pretty much as expected. Obama asked for concessions on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement, and received a souvenir “key milestone” whose content and location remain a mystery. Abe asked for exports of fracked gas, kind words about nuclear power, and promises on the Senkaku-Diaoyu Island dispute, and – for what they are worth - got commitments on paper. The US-Japan Joint Statement and Obama's comments to the Yomiuri newspaper emphasized collaboration, including “coordination between our militaries.” But on energy, Team Abe and the nuclear village won out and the official depiction of collaboration was limited to “working together to promote the development of clean energy, including by facilitating business cooperation and deepening civil nuclear cooperation.” Japan's April 11, 2014 “Strategic Energy Plan” – a plan without any targets for anything - was “welcomed,” whereas the US military's target of 25% renewable energy by 2025 remained one unnoticed elephant among the herd in the room. Another elephant was the US military and “climate change,” which got three boilerplate mentions in the Joint Statement. There was no emphasis on US-Japan military cooperation on climate change, even though the US military itself has for years identified climate change as the mother of all threats, including fully 8 detailed references to “climate change” and its consequences in its March 4, 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR 2014). Indeed, the American green military-industrial complex is openly calling for NATO to focus even more on climate change and greening, and not get unduly distracted by the Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan. As for the assurance of fracked gas that Abe got, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus recently dismissed relying on it rather than renewables and efficiency as “prohibitively expensive.”
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Notes
1 Indeed, even as the two leaders spoke, Japanese utility Tohoku Electric Power concluded an agreement to buy 300,000 tonnes per year of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for 16 years from 2022 on the basis of US Department of Energy February 2014 approval of exports from a currently proposed Cameron LNG project. See “Japan's Tohoku to buy US Cameron LNG from M'bishi,” Reuters, April 24, 2014.
2 The English text is available at “Full text of the Japan-US joint statement,” Mainichi Newspaper, April 27, 2014.
3 See Mel Gurtov, “Obama's Japan Visit and US-Japan-China Relations: A Missed Opportunity for Conflict Prevention,” Asia-Pacific Journal, Apr. 26, 2014:
4 The Quadrennial Defense Review 2014, like its 2010 predecessor and a slew of other US military documents, emphasizes the threat from climate change and the need to respond by renewable energy, efficiency and other elements of resilience. See here.
5 See Sheri Goodman et al “Commentary: Can Stoltenberg Tackle NATO's Climate Mission?,” Defense News, April 14, 2014. Goodman is executive director of CNA Military Advisory Board. Her co-authors, Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell are co-founders and directors of the impressively activist Center for Climate and Security, whose advisory board is largely former military officialdom. See here.
6 See Chris Braswell, “Secretary of Navy Talks Energy Security at ASU Event,” Modern Times Magazine, April 25, 2014.
7 The highly regarded Rocky Mountain Institute's Cameron M Burns declared in June 2010 that the Institute has long worked with the military because “[t]he military, especially the American military, has a huge influence on what we as a culture ultimately adopt.” Cameron M Burns, “Using Military Might for a Cooler World,” Rocky Mountain Institute Solutions Journal, Spring 2010 (Vol. 3, No. 2).
8 One recent example was the April 11, 2014 agreement between the island nation of Tonga and the Nevada National Guard in a “State Partnership Program” centred on education and renewable energy. The US Department of Defense has 68 such partnerships involving 74 nations globally. See Dennis Fournier, “Nevada National Guard joins forces with Tonga in State Partnership Program,” National Guard, April 16, 2014.
9 Jonathan Leake and Sally Wardle, “”Solar Power is ‘world's best hope,‘“ Sunday Times, April 6, 2014.
10 See Alex Morales, “The Two Numbers Climate Economists Can't Stand to See Together,” Bloomberg News, March 28, 2014.
11 A succinct overview of Citigroup's report can be found at Giles Parkinson, “Citigroup says the ‘Age of Renewables’ has begun,” RenewEconomy, March 27, 2014.
12 Fred Pearce, “UN Panel Looks to Renewables As the Key to Stabilizing Climate,” Yale Environment 360, April 17, 2014.
13 The albedo shift (a measure of radiation frequency) alone – decreasing from 0.52 to 0.48 between 1979 and 2011 - has been calculated as a feedback equivalent to 25% of the effect of CO2. See Kristina Pistone, Ian Eisenman, and V. Ramanathan, “Observational determination of albedo decrease caused by vanishing Arctic sea ice,” PNAS, February 18, 2014.
14 The best, recent examination of this is Ugo Bardi, Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth is Plundering the Planet. Chelsea Green, 2014: paperback
15 See Pilita Clark, “Climate change report was watered down says senior economist,” Financial Times, April 26, 2014.
16 See QDR 2014: pp. iv and 8 here.
17 See Pew Charitable Trusts, “Power Surge: Energy Security and the Department of Defense,” January 16, 2014.
18 One of the best followers of this phenomenon is Tina Casey at Clean Technica. See also Andrew DeWit, “The US Military, Green Energy, and the SPIDERS at Pearl Harbor,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 11, Issue 9, No. 5, March 4, 2013.
19 Because of friction over US bases in Okinawa, Hatoyama and Obama were left to stress energy and environmental cooperation at the November 15, 2009 summit. For the details, see “Obama and Hatoyama Pledge Success at Copenhagen Climate Summit,” Environmental News Service, November 13, 2009.
20 See p 211, Ministry of Defense Japan, Defense of Japan 2013. Government of Japan.
21 See the listing of initiatives in “Japan-US Island Grid Project in Maui,” New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, February 2013.
22 On this, see the excellent analysis by Annmaria Shimabuku, “Who Should Bear the Burden of US Bases? Governor Nakaima's Plea for a Relocation Site Outside of Okinawa Prefecture, but within Japan,” The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 45 No 1, November 7, 2011.
23 See (in Japanese) “The Real Aim of the ‘Eco-Measures’ is to Legitimate Continued Presence: Sympathy Budget Even to be used For Solar Power on US Bases,” Akahata, March 15, 2012.
24 See the analysis by Patrick M. Cronin, Daniel M Kliman and Abraham M. Denmark, “Renewal: Revitalizing the US-Japan Alliance,” Center for a New American Security, October 2010.
25 One example is seen in Annie Isabel Fukushima, Ayano Ginoza, Michiko Hase, Gwyn Kirk, Deborah Lee and Taeva Shefler, “Disaster Militarism: Rethinking U.S. Relief in the Asia-Pacific,” Foreign Policy in Focus, March 11, 2014.
26 On the Rountable and its participants, see the METI press release.
27 The Japan Renewable Energy Foundation web site is here.
28 See Steven Mufson and Tom Hamburger, “A battle is looming over renewable energy, and fossil fuel interests are losing,” Washington Post, April 26, 2014.
29 Andrew DeWit, “3-11 and Japan's Shift to Smart, Distributed Power,” NBR Asia Policy 17 (January 2014).
30 On this, see (in Japanese) the preliminary draft final report (April 11, 2014 version) of the Innovation-Promotion Commission in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
31 See, for example, “A Clean Tech Air Force By 2033: That's the IAF's Green Goal,” December 13, 2013.
32 See Juan Cole, “Israeli Kibbutz uses Robots To Combat Desert Dust that obscures Solar Panels,” Informed Comment, March 26, 2014.
33 Sabine Fruhstuck, “A ‘Dynamic Joint Defense Force‘? An Introduction to Japanese Strategic Thinking,” Asia-Pacifi Journal, March 18, 2014.
34 See Christopher Martin, “MIT's Liquid Metal Stores Solar Power Until After Sundown,” Bloomberg, March 7, 2014.
35 On this, see Andrew DeWit, “Climate Change and the Military Role in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response,” in Paul Bacon and Christopher Hobson (eds) Human Security and Japan's Triple Disaster (Routledge, 2014).
36 See, for example, “Union of Local Governments in Japan to Triple Renewable Energy Output in 2020,” Japan for Sustainability, April 19, 2014.
37 See (in Japanese) “Kanagawa Smart Energy Programme,” Kanagawa Prefecture Industry and Labour Bureau, April, 2014.
38 On McGinn's background and critical role in developing the ACORE “National Security and Defense Initiative,” see “ACORE Recognizes and Thanks Past CEO and President, Secretary Dennis McGinn for His Leadership on and Service to Renewable Energy and the Organization,” Globe Newswire, January 17, 2014.
39 See Aaron Sheldrick and Osamu Tsukimori, “As Japan weighs energy options, costs mount for idled reactors,” Reuters, April 8, 2014.
40 Kobayashi Yoshikazu, “Enhancing Japan's Energy Resilience: The Role for the U.S.-Japan Alliance,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, April 25, 2014.
41 Bloomberg's James Gibney for example argues “Japan should make disaster the mother of invention,” March 14, 2014.
42 Andrew DeWit, “Japan's Energy Policy Impasse,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 14, No. 1, April 7, 2014.
43 Concern about this has reached the mainstream, as in Tom Zeller Jr, “Is the US Shale Boom Going Bust?” Bloomberg, April 22, 2014.
44 See Keith Johnson, “Burning Ice and the Future of Energy,” Foreign Policy, April, 2014.
45 David M Slayton and David Titley, “Time for real leadership on climate change, energy, national security,” Fox News, March 31, 2014.