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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
On December 10, 2010, near the close of the COP 16 meeting in Cancun, Mexico, the international press reported that 20 national leaders, including those of the UK and Mexico, were lined up to call Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto. They sought to persuade Kan and his government not to abandon the 2008 to 2012 Kyoto Protocol approach to securing carbon reductions via explicit and compulsory targets. Their concern was well grounded. Arima Jun, the Deputy Director General for Environmental Affairs at Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, shocked the Cancun conference on December 2 with his declaration that “Japan will not inscribe its target under the Kyoto Protocol on any conditions or under any circumstances.” Translated into everyday speech, Arima's blunt bureaucratese meant that Japan would not agree to an extension of the Protocol. Observers were so taken aback by the announcement that they assumed it must be a negotiating ploy. Surely Japan, a shrinking presence on the international stage and desperate to pump up its soft power, would not junk a treaty that earned the country valuable “global brand recognition” with each iteration of “Kyoto.” Yet Arima's announcement was confirmed the next day by a decision of the Japanese cabinet.
1 Andrew DeWit gratefully acknowledges JSPS Research Grant (#) for funding this research.
2 The COP acronym stands for the “Conference of the Parties,” which meets annually to work on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. On the conference and related matters, see the comprehensive overview at: http://unfccc.int/2860.php
3 The December 10 BBC reported it as a “diplomatic assault on Japan in the hope of softening its resistance to the Kyoto Protocol”: link.
4 The Protocol covers the period from 2008 to 2012, and has been ratified by 191 countries, though not the United States. It obliges 37 industrialized countries to reduce their CO2 emissions by an average of 5 percent relative to 1990 levels by 2012. There is as yet no international agreement on carbon emissions reductions to cover subsequent years. A concise description of the Kyoto Protocol and its mechanisms can be found here.
5 This position was reported on by UPI on December 2, 2010.
6 The policy commitments caught the attention of overseas observers. In the August 28, 2009, edition of the New York Times, Lisa Friedman noted that the DPJ targets were very robust and a stark difference from the LDP regime: link.
7 For example, Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, of the Breakthrough Institute, unreservedly supported the DPJ position in a December 7, 2010 explanation of “Why Japan Disowned Kyoto.” They argue that the “zombie UN process” with its focus on “top-down emissions reductions” needs to be set aside in favour of the Copenhagen process and its “more limited national commitments to deploy low-carbon technologies, reduce energy intensity, and take other measures to reduce, or at least slow the growth of emissions.” Link
8 Of course, the Kyoto Protocol's biggest problem is that it is simply inadequate in the face of potentially runaway global warming.
9 One of the present authors (Iida Tetsunari) has been directly involved in national energy and environmental policymaking for over a decade. Part of this article draws on his “Why has the new government's energy and environmental policies gone into reverse” [Shinseiken no kankyou, enerugii seisaku ha naze gyaku-funshashitaka?], Sekai, January 2011.
10 On the carbon-trading backpedalling, see Andy Sharp “Japan Drops Cap and Trade,” December 30, 2010.
11 One could argue that most countries' climate policies are dominated by incumbent energy interests, which focus their lobbying in national councils of power. Fossil fuels provide 86% of global energy, and their exploration, development and retail industries are the world's largest and most profitable industry. Their products are also responsible for 60-70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Securing effective international agreement to ameliorate this destructive political economy is thus inherently difficult but imperative.
12 We use “incumbent” here to refer to the vested interests sketched above. “Incumbent” in this usage means currently in place, and suggests incentives to protect that position against change and competitors.
13 One example is seen in the first industrial revolution and its “political replacement effect,” which Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson outline in their “Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective,” in American Political Science Review, Vol 100 No 1 February 2006: link.
14 Moreover, Japanese urban governments in Tokyo and Yokohama are seeking to implement, in their jurisdictions, some of the very carbon reduction, renewable and other policies that the DPJ is backing away from: link.
15 The report, whose financial data can be found on page 27, is available for download from the REN21's website.
16 See the analysis at the US Energy Information Administration's May 25, 2010 released “International Energy Outlook”: link.
17 The group's November 16, 2010 press release can be found here.
18 See the IEA's 2010 World Energy Report summary factsheet here.
19 For an analysis of the IEA report, see this link.
20 For the US, see Figure ES-2 in the July 8, 2010 “The 21st Century Utility: Positioning for a Low-Carbon Future.” An overview and download link can be found here. For the EU, see the main tables in “Energy Sources, Production Costs and Performance of Technologies for Power Generation, Heating and Transport,” EU Commission Working Document SEC 2008 2872, November 13, 2008: link. It is instructive to compare these data with such figures as the October 12, 2007 data from Japan Nuclear Research and Development Agency: link.
21 A recent comparison of power prices, for households and for industry, and based on IEA data, can be found here.
See also, IEA, 2010. Energy Prices and Taxes: Quarterly Statistics 3rd quarter 2010. IEA Publications: Paris.
22 America not only has plenty of cheap coal-fired power to hinder the diffusion of alternatives, but it is currently enthralled by a shale gas bubble that allies of the conventional energy sector deem a “revolution” offering a century of low-cost supply. The bubble is blunting incentives to adopt renewable power. On the hype, see “CERA Week: Shale gas can be a “Game Changer “for North America's energy future,” in E&E March 10, 2010: link.
23 See International Energy Agency, “Coal Information, 2010,” especially tables 5.1 and 5.3. Note that coking coal is used in making steel in blast furnaces, and at present has no practical substitute.
24 As Lester Brown points out, Japan was an early leader in exploiting its geothermal resources, but slacked off greatly over the past two decades. But an indication of the potential is seen in the fact that Japan has 2,800 spas, 5,500 public bathhouses, and 15,600 hotels and inns that use geothermal hot water. See Brown, “Geothermal: Getting Energy From the Earth,” Earth Policy Institute, August 31, 2010: http://www.earth-policy.org/book_bytes/2010/pb4ch05_ss4
25 In a June 30, 2010 assessment, the Japanese Wind Power Association estimated that 10% of the country's power could be derived from wind: link.
26 See the data (in Japanese) from the Petroleum Association of Japan.
27 On the “Sunshine Project” and other developments, see this link.
28 For the data, see Matthew Roney, “Solar Power,” Earth Policy Institute, September 21, 2010.
29 On this, see Oshima Kenichi Saiseikanou enerugii no seijikeizaigaku: enerugii seisaku no guriin kaikaku ni mukete [The Political Economy of Renewable Energy: Towards a Greening of Energy Policy], Tokyo: Toyo Keizai, 2010, pp. 36 and 44.
30 As Gavan McCormack argues in “Japan as a Plutonium Superpower,” Japan can be considered “nuclear obsessed” due to its plan to put plutonium at the centre of its energy economy: link.
31 On the plan, see the July 16, 2010 summary by the METI Energy and Resources Division.
32 The World Nuclear Association's December 2010 report on “Energy Subsidies and External Costs” shows that Japan's fission R&R was 61.4% of total energy R&R for 2005: link.
33 On the organization and scale of Japan's carbon-intensive sector, see Morotomi Toru and Asaoka Mie, The Road to a Low-Carbon Economy [tei-tansoshakai he no michi]: Tokyo: Iwanami, 2010, pp. 16-24.
34 On this matter, see the “Is Japanese industry really the most energy efficient?” section in Kikonet's “Fact Sheet of the Keidanren Voluntary Action Plan,” no date: link.
35 On the ineffectiveness of voluntary targets, see Kyoto University Professor Ikkatai Seijji's comments in “Climate Change Policies in Japan,” December 1, 2010: link.
36 An English-language version of the DPJ's 2009 election “manifesto” can be downloaded here. The environmental policy commitments are on pp 23-26.
37 The previous Aso Taro regime (LDP) had announced a much-derided plan to cut emissions by 8% by 2020 (versus 1990) levels. Japan also has a ridiculously low renewable energy target (as a percent of electrical generation capacity) of 1.63% by 2014. Compare New York state's target of 24% by 2013 and California's commitment to 33% by 2020: link.
38 On the studies as well as their politicized use, see Iida Tetsunari and Andrew DeWit “Is Hatoyama Reckless or Realistic: Making the Case for a 25% Cut in Japanese Greenhouse Gases”, Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 7 Issue 38 No. 4 September 21, 2009: link.
39 As former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern argues, “It is a profound and dangerous mistake to ignore [green growth] opportunities and see the transition to low-carbon growth as a burden and growth-reducing diversion. That mistake arises if you apply the crude growth models from the middle of the last century with their emphasis on fixed technologies, limited substitution policies, and simplistic accumulation.” See Nicholas Stern “China's growth, China's cities, and the new global low-carbon industrial revolution,” November 10, 2010, Policy Paper, Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy: link.
40 “All-Japan” largely means attaching Japanese government loans to overseas project bids as well as making them a top foreign-policy priority. On this see Nippon Keidanren “Promoting Regional Infrastructure Development for a Prosperous Asia,” March 16, 2010: link.
41 The IEA's 2010 “World Energy Outlook” sees nuclear power as going from 6% of global power production in 2008 to 8% by 2035: link.
42 On these issues, see the summary of the report here.
43 Link.
44 The survey can be found here.
45 On the announcement, see Watanabe Chisaki, “Japan's Government Fudges Start of Carbon Trading Amid Industry Opposition,” Bloomberg December 28, 2010: link.
46 On Thailand, for example, see Paul Gipe “Thailand Feed-in Tariff Program Harvests Large Crop of Projects,” The Solar Home and Business Journal, December 7, 2010.
47 Note that Denjiren made its organizational bias towards nuclear power clear when it greeted the election of the DPJ in August of 2009 with the following: “For Japan which lacks energy resources, the government must continue to pursue energy policies designed to simultaneously achieve a stable energy supply, economic efficiency and environmental conservation. The key is surely nuclear energy. Therefore, with top priority on safety, we are committed to achieving smooth progress in nuclear power generation, including the nuclear fuel cycle. We expect the new administration to establish solid national strategies and policy frameworks that do not waver in the mid term, as stated in the “Nuclear Power Nation Plan. “(Link)
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