Guest essay by Eric Worrall
“It’s a total joke”: Japan throws a hilarious smokescreen about their commitment to climate action.
Climate change: Japan’s ‘green hydrogen’ answer to coal?
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News, TokyoIt was a glorious autumn afternoon and I was standing on the hillside overlooking Tokyo Bay. Beside me was Takao Saiki, a polite gentleman usually in his 70s.
But today Saiki-San is angry.
“It was a complete joke,” he said, in perfect English. “Ridiculous!”
His accident was caused by a huge construction site blocking our view of the bay – a 1.3 gigawatt coal-fired power plant under construction.
“I don’t understand why we still have to burn coal to generate electricity,” said Rikuro Suzuki, Saiki-San’s friend. “This plant alone will emit more than seven million tons of carbon dioxide every year!”
Suzuki-San’s point is a good point. Should Japan cut its coal consumption, rather than increase it, at a time of great concern about coal’s climate impact?
So why coal? The answer is the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
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In their place, Japan’s gas-fired power plants were running too long. However, as Britain recently discovered, natural gas is very expensive.
Therefore, the Japanese Government has decided to build 22 new coal-fired power plants, running on cheap coal imported from Australia. Economically, it makes sense. Environmentally speaking, not so much. Japan is currently under great pressure to stop using coal.
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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59525480
Japan claims its coal plants are ready to deliver green hydrogen, but given how high the price of natural gas is, my guess is that the transition to green hydrogen will be a long time coming.
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