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Japan's Resilient, Decarbonizing and Democratic Smart Communities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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On December 1, 2014 the rapidly expanding domain of renewable energy burst through a stubborn bottleneck of vested interests and outmoded ideas. Germany's biggest utility, E. ON, announced it would abandon fossil fuel and nuclear power to create “a new business model based on renewables, intelligent grid systems, energy management and other services.” If its plans go forward as proposed, E. ON's portfolio in what it calls “the new energy world” will include about 20 gigawatts of renewable generation in operation or in the pipeline, over 1 million kilometers of transmission infrastructure, and 33 million customers on the sales end. In an era of paradigmatic changes in energy technology and business models, and particularly in all aspects of electricity (i.e., from generation through distribution and to consumption), E. ON's announcement still came as a surprise even to the German authorities. Experts are struggling to grasp the enormity of the implications of E. ON's move for power systems, climate policy, financial markets, regulatory regimes, and other important aspects.
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References
Notes
1 This article complements and expands on Andrew DeWit, “Japan's Radical Energy Technocrats: Structural Reform Through Smart Communities, the Feed-in Tariff and Japanese-Style ”Stadtwerke,“ The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 47, No. 2, December 1, 2014.
2 Paul Hockenos, “German Fossil Fuel Giant Jumps on Renewables Bandwagon,” Renewable Energy World, December 3, 2014.
3 See E. ON's December 1 overview of its revolutionary organizational changes and distribution of assets here.
4 Paul Hockenos, “German Fossil Fuel Giant Jumps on Renewables Bandwagon,” Renewable Energy World, December 3, 2014.
5 See Kashiwagi Takao (ed), Smart Communities: A Smart Network Design for Local Government Infrastructure (Tokyo: Jihyosha).
6 On this, see Kenji Kaneko, “Japan Announces Roadmap for Hydrogen Introduction,” Nikkei BP CleanTech Institute, July 3, 2014.
7 Kashiwagi's leadership message is available on-line in English.
8 On this, see p. 5 Caroline Julian, “Creating Local Energy Economies: Lessons from Germany,” ResPublica, July 2014.
9 See Paul Hockenos, “Local, Decentralized, Innovative: Why Germany's Municipal Utilities are Right for the Energiewende,” Energy Transition, September 28, 2013.
10 Jutta Schwengsbier, “The energy avantgarde: when coal mining goes green,” DW, December 4, 2014.
11 See Charleen Fei and Ian Rinehart, “The Re-Municipalization of the Hamburg Grid,” Energy Transition, June 27, 2014.
12 On this ambitious goal, see Claire Provost and Matt Kennard, “MSP Co-Director interviewed on remunicipalisation trend,” Municipal Services Project, November 12, 2014.
13 See p 32 European Parliament Directorate General for Internal Policies, “Mapping Smart Cities in the EU,” January 2014.
14 See p. 38 Richard Samuels, The Politics of Regional Policy in Japan: Localities Incorporated? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983
15 See p. 139 Masaru Sakamoto, “Public Corporations in Japan, with Special Emphasis on Personnel Management,” in All Farazmand (ed) Public Enterprise Management: International Case Studies. Greenwood Press, 1996.
16 See (in Japanese) “The Particulars of Meiji and Showa-era Amalgamations and Changes in the Number of Local Governments,” Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, (nd).
17 The details on Japan's local public corporations are available (in Japanese) at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications White Paper on Local Finance, 2014.
18 For a good recent paper on Japan's financial reforms as a work in progress, which may move to Anglo-Saxon liberalism or revert back more towards traditional models, see Kenji E. Kushida and Kay Shimizu, “Syncretism: the politics of Japan's financial reforms,” Socio-Economic Review (2013) 11.
19 On the institutional details, not the politics, see Peter Weigand and Sumitaka Matsumoto, “ Japan's New Electricity Market,” Electric Light and Power, July 16, 2014.
20 On this, see “Small-town Japan's big hopes for energy self-sufficiency,” Nikkei Asian Review, October 28, 2014.
21 See (in Japanese) “Opening of a Commission for Deploying a Local-Government-Led Community Energy System,” Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), November 4, 2014.
22 For a summary of the politics of “local Abenomics,” see Linda Sieg and Tetsushi Kajimoto, “Japan's ‘Abenomics’ feared in trouble as challenges build,” Reuters, September 2, 2014.
23 On this very important question of whether the public sector will lead, see Alex Marshall, “Big Data, Big Questions,” Metropolis, February 2014.
24 The role of the stadtwerke in smart communities is especially well depicted in MIC's Local Revival Group's Local Policy Division's May 13, 2014 presentation (in Japanese) to the ruling LDP. See “Concerning the Project on Distributed Energy Infrastructure”.
25 In a March 19, 2010 presentation, for example, Kashiwagi argued that an energy system shift was underway, towards low-carbon sources including nuclear power, “clean coal,” natural gas as well as renewables linked together via ICT and smart communities. See (in Japanese) Kashiwagi Takao “The Smart Community Concept and Environmental Business,” Kanto METI March 19, 2010.
26 Kikkawa voiced this idea during a September 3, 2013 event (in Japanese) “Towards a National-Government-Led Bolstering of International Standardization Strategies as well as a Diffusion of Japanese Smart Cities Globally,” Nikkei BP (transcript), September 3, 2013.
27 On this see (in Japanese) Kashiwagi's description of the project in his article for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism (MLIT), “The Smart City: Achieving Both Economic Development and Environmental Measures,” MLIT Shinjidai, Vol 71, February 2011.
28 See for example Komiyama's presentation on “Japan as Forerunner of Emerging Issues,” December 6, 2010.
29 The event is summarized by David Braun “Sustainable Cities: Challenges and Opportunities in Japan,” National Geographic, October 21, 2014.
30 They make this explicit in a Japanese-language discussion from October of last year, where they emphasize smart communities as core to growth. See Komiyama Hiroshi and Kashiwagi Takao, “The Outlook for Energy Policy and the Role of Heat Distribution Business,” Japan District Heating Council, October 2013.
31 These flagship projects are led by METI and grouped in the Japan Smart Community Alliance.
32 See pp 14-17 of the Cabinet's growth strategy (in Japanese).
33 The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has an English-language summary of the country's energy plans here.
34 See e.g. pp 8-12 for their keen awareness of developments in Germany and elsewhere and pp 40-41 for their awareness of the risk of building a Galapagos.
35 Toshiba and Hitachi's smart community PR is readily available, in English and Japanese, in videos and documents. See, for example, “Smart Community Projects on ”Eco-Island Miyakojima“ of Okinawa,” Toshiba Smart Community Blog, July 15, 2014.
36 See Office of Naval Research, “Energy Action Month: ONR Expands ”Green“ Reach in Asia-Pacific,” October 27, 2014.
37 See an overview of Greenfield's work in “Dumbing down the smart city,” London School of Economics and Political Science, May 19, 2014.
38 On comparative cement consumption, see Bill Gates (citing Vaclav Smil) “Have You Hugged a Concrete Pillar Today?”, June 12, 2014.
39 On the basis of Nikkei BP's 2012 “Comprehensive Guide to Smart Cities,” Toshiba projected a total of 36 projects in Japan and 485 globally (including Japan's), with 217 of the global projects being centred on smart grids and renewable energy (see in Japanese “Growth Strategy for Building Smart Communities”). Japan's projects have since then increased to over 100, at least, and the 5000-member Smart City Council's 2014 “Smart Cities Readiness Guide” suggests there are several thousand projects underway globally.
40 See, for example, David Dodge and Duncan Kinney, “Waste heat - How Vancouver mined its sewage to heat an entire neighbourhood,” Green Energy Futures, February 4, 2013.
41 On engineered wood, see Paul Miles, “Why architects are now using wood to construct big buildings,” Financial Times, September 26, 2014.
42 See the website (in Japanese) for the EcoNet Tokyo 62 “Renewable Energy and Smart Community Research Commission,” which is to produce the handbook.
43 The Ider Project page and its numersous research reports (in Japanese) is here.
44 See, in Japanese, the Kanto Meti's page on its “sumakomi” (smart community) collaboration group.
45 See in particular, her arguments on pp 41-2 about the paucity of local leadership, citizen engagement and roles for universities and NGOs. Clarisse Pham, “Smart Cities in Japan,” EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, October 2014.
46 The survey results (in Japanese), presented to the Commission on October 8, 2014, are available here.
47 See also Stephen Voss “A Risk Index for Megacities,” September 5, 2006, and a more comprehensive list in Japanese.
48 See Jeff Spross, “Why Tropical Storm Vongfong May Just Be The Beginning For Japan,” October 12, 2014.
49 Streeck brilliantly and concisely explains how the Schumpeter-Goldscheid tax state became the debt state and is now (especially in Germany) a consolidation state that manifests an “uncompromising determination to place its obligations to its creditors above all other obligations” and a coalition of forces that stands in the ways of spending increases and indeed emphasizes cuts on all expenditure other than debt-service payments. See his “Buying Time: the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism,” talk on October 20, 2014 at the LSE. The cited remarks are at the 35:00-minute mark.
50 Michael Mann warns that deep cuts in CO2 have to start now, not sometime later, or humanity risks runaway warming and unimaginable, accelerating chaos. I'd mention McKibben and others.
51 See here.
52 See here.
53 See here.
54 See here.
55 See here.
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