Shaping Japan's Energy toward 2050 Participating in the Round Table for Studying Energy Situations

JFS Newsletter No.189 (May 2018)

The 2nd meeting of the Round Table for Studying Energy Situations on youtube

Japan's Basic Act on Energy Policy directs the government to draft a Basic (or, recently, "Strategic") Energy Plan and review it once every three years.

The Basic Energy Plan of 2010 stated that to boost the zero-emissions power supply (nuclear + renewable energy) to a 70% ratio, 14 or more additional reactors would need to be built, increasing the utilization rate of nuclear power plants and deploying renewable energy to the maximum extent possible.

After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 and the subsequent accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the Basic Energy Plan of 2014 positioned nuclear power as "an important base-load power source," stating that dependency on nuclear power generation would be lowered to the extent possible by efforts to save energy and introduce renewable energy as well as by improving the efficiency of thermal power generation, etc., while proceeding with the restart of the nuclear power plants.

Renewable energy was rated as facing "various challenges" in terms of stable supply and costs at that moment, but as a promising, multi-characteristic, important energy source that could contribute to energy security as it can be domestically produced and is free of greenhouse gas emissions.

Based on the Strategic Energy Plan, the Long-term Energy Supply and Demand Outlook compiled in July 2015, stated that the electric power supply-demand structure in fiscal 2030 would be as follows: renewable energy approximately 22 to 24%, LNG 27%, coal 26% and oil 3%, reducing dependence on nuclear power plants, which had been about 30% before the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, to around 20 to 22%.

In response to subsequent changes in circumstances, the Strategic Policy Committee of the Advisory Committee for Natural Resources and Energy began meeting in early August 2017 to discuss the next Strategic Energy Plan.

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Scientists Succeed in Quantifying Arctic Ocean CO2 Uptake for the First Time

Image by ujasnpandya Some Rights Reserved.

The Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and the Meteorological Research Institute of the Japan Meteorological Agency announced on March 22, 2018 that they have succeeded in quantifying the CO2 uptake by the Arctic Ocean. Their researchers estimate CO2 uptake in the Arctic Ocean at 10% of the total for the world's oceans, even though it accounts for only 3% of the world's total ocean surface area. These findings are expected to contribute to calculating the global carbon budget and better understanding ocean acidification.

JAMTEC in collaboration with an international team of scientists including the Meteorological Research Institute of the Japan Meteorological Agency, the University of Bergen, and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, created a distribution map containing 216 months (1997 to 2014) worth of air-sea CO2 exchange in the ocean north of latitude 60 degrees North. The result revealed that the annual Arctic Ocean CO2 uptake is 180 plus or minus 130 TgC.

Generally, as the water temperature rises, CO2 uptake decreases. It has been found that long-term changes in overall CO2 uptake in the Arctic sea are diminishing, as the effect of rising water temperatures decreasing uptake is being offset by increased uptake due to decreasing sea ice.

High uptake is seen in the Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea on the Atlantic Ocean side and the Chukchi Sea in the Pacific Ocean side where there are strong winds and low sea-ice concentrations. During seasonal changes, high uptake is seen in winter in the Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea when there are strong winds.

In the Chukchi Sea, high uptake is seen during summer when seawater temperature is high with little sea ice and autumn when winds gradually become stronger. In the Arctic Ocean, uptake is at its peak in October when there is little sea ice and winds start getting stronger.