Japan urged to embrace renewable energy technology

Oct 10, 2007, 9:40 GMT

Tokyo - The Japanese government should extend its aid to promote renewable energy rather than focusing on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, the governing body of the second annual renewable energy convention said Wednesday.

    Japan is failing to come close to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol target to cut CO2 emissions by 6 per cent from the level in fiscal 1990 by fiscal 2012 through the implementation of existing measures.

The Japan Council for Renewable Energy said the government should help secure renewable energy and develop technology as one option for the future.

'The government should provide incentives that motivate consumers to use such renewable energy,' Kosuke Kurokawa, the council representative, was quoted as saying by Kankyo Shimbun.

The second international exhibition for renewable energy opened Wednesday at a convention hall outside of Tokyo with 276 companies and groups promoting their environmentally friendly products and efforts.

This year's convention introduces mechanics of renewable energy created by solarvoltaic, wind power, biomass and biofuel among others.

While solarvoltaic technology took up about 60 per cent of exhibitions last year, wind- and ocean-energy technologies have gained recognition, Mitsuaki Tanaka of the council said. Generating energy from biomass is also slowly catching up in the industry, he added.

Although the industry has been actively improving technology to generate renewable energy and promoting not only business use but household use of such technology, the Japanese government fails to support the movement, according to the council.

For instance, households that use photovoltaic (PV) panels spend about 2.5 million yen (21,331 dollars) to set up the system to generate 3 kilowatt electricity. But when the utilities companies buy the excess electricity from the producers, they only pay at most 30 yen per kilowatt.

Households with PV installations hope that the government would raise the rate per kilowatt electricity following examples abroad such as Germany and the United States. Japan is one of the leading nations with photovoltaic installations next to Germany and the United States.

The three-day international convention on renewable energy expects some 25,000 visitors.