2024-01-18

The following is from an article by Taishi Sugiyama, Research Director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies.
It appeared in today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title, “Japan Must Not Commit Suicide Through Its Basic Energy Plan.”
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people throughout the world.
Emphasis in the text other than the headings is mine.
The geopolitical situation surrounding Japan is grave.
In the Seventh Basic Energy Plan, there is no alternative but to place priority on national security and the economy.
The economy is important also because it forms the foundation of national security.
The Great Exodus of Japanese and European Industry
Under the Paris Agreement, which is based on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, each country is required to submit a numerical CO₂ target for 2035 by February 2025.
The Japanese government will begin reviewing the Seventh Basic Energy Plan, and it appears to intend to submit a CO₂ target consistent with that plan.
But this is extremely dangerous.
The reason is that the bar in international negotiations has risen sharply.
At COP28 late last year, a figure of a 60 percent worldwide reduction by 2035 compared with 2019 was put forward.
Conforming to that figure would be equivalent to a death sentence for industry.
Industry is already fleeing the EU and Japan, where CO₂ regulations are being tightened indiscriminately.
While Germany’s chemical industry is reducing domestic production, BASF, the largest company in the sector, is investing 10 billion euros to build a plant in China.
Japan’s steel industry is also closing domestic plants while building blast furnaces in India and acquiring an American steel company.
Even if the government provides subsidies to attract certain companies, the money required will return as additional costs imposed on other companies.
It is impossible to prevent countless companies from joining this great exodus.
The very survival of the nation is at stake.
The End of Global Decarbonization
For the past several years, administrations promoting left-wing policies have remained in power in both the EU and the United States.
But now the anger of the people has exploded over the uncontrolled acceptance of immigrants.
Then, as the burden imposed on the public by decarbonization policies—including compulsory electric vehicles and the introduction of renewable energy—has become clear, voices of resentment have begun to rise.
If a Republican president is elected in the United States at the end of this year, whether it is Mr. Trump or anyone else, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement and abolish the Green Deal—that is, decarbonization.
In the EU, the right has begun winning national elections one after another and will also make major gains in the European Parliament elections this June.
As for the Global South, it rejected from the outset the G7’s demand for “decarbonization by 2050” at the COP held late last year.
The Paris Agreement has reached a complete deadlock, and only developed countries remain obsessed with self-destructive targets.
Both the Biden administration in the United States and Germany’s coalition government, which includes the Green Party in its cabinet, are suffering from low approval ratings.
Even so, to please their left-wing support bases, their environmentalism is becoming increasingly radical in international negotiations.
They proclaim “ambitious” CO₂ targets and demand that Japan follow them.
But if the Republicans win the presidential election, the United States will make a 180-degree turn and reign as a fossil-fuel superpower.
If the EU continues on its present course, it will commit suicide through its net-zero policy—that is, decarbonization.
However, the political shift to the right may advance as early as this year, and net zero will probably be abandoned before long.
Whether in the Global South, the United States, Europe, or any other country, decarbonization is impossible, and a review of this policy is inevitable.
What, then, of Japan?
Legislation for decarbonization, said to entail costs of 150 trillion yen over ten years, is steadily moving forward.
The administration, driven by its own inertia, is like a gigantic ship incapable of changing course even when an iceberg appears before it.
If this continues, a reckless CO₂ target will be submitted in accordance with the Paris Agreement and allocated among individual sectors under the Seventh Basic Energy Plan.
What on earth will happen?
Electricity and heating costs will soar, industrial hollowing-out will accelerate, and the Japanese economy will sink.
A weakened Japan will be unable to withstand China’s influence, will become a vassal state, and may see freedom of speech and political freedom restricted.
It would, in effect, be the death of Japan.
What the Seventh Basic Energy Plan Must Be
What should be written into the Seventh Basic Energy Plan to prevent energy suicide?
First, electricity and heating costs must be reduced.
Higher costs damage national strength and undermine national security.
Instead of makeshift subsidies for electricity and heating costs, a fundamental reduction in costs should be achieved through the following three measures.
The first is the maximum possible use of nuclear power.
The irrational demand for zero risk must be abandoned.
It is the security and economic risks arising from not using nuclear power that are truly enormous.
This is because fossil fuels depend on imports, while renewable energy is unstable and expensive.
The second is the stable procurement of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels remain the mainstay of Japan’s energy supply.
Under the current Sixth Basic Energy Plan, supply volumes were forcibly planned at low levels to conform to the CO₂ target, which has obstructed the stable procurement of fuel.
This folly must be avoided.
The third concerns the development of technologies to replace fossil fuels.
For renewable energy, synthetic fuels, and other alternatives, a hasty expansion of their introduction should be avoided, and efforts should focus on developing technologies that reduce costs.
When it becomes clear that a technology offers no prospect of reducing costs, its development should be suspended and returned to the stage of basic research.
Finally, the Basic Energy Plan must not allocate CO₂ emissions by sector.
Allocations based on reckless targets would amount to a death sentence for industry and trigger a great exodus.
As for the Paris Agreement, even if submitting a CO₂ target as an expression of the administration’s intentions is unavoidable, everything thereafter should be limited to a mere list of measures, thereby rendering it harmless.
That, however, would be the inferior course.
The superior course would be to withdraw from this self-destructive agreement together with the United States.