Japan’s opportunity to rebuild with smart grid and solar power
The nuclear village and its hired guns in the academic and administrative and political sectors have worked together to craft a mechanism through which compensation will almost inevitably be torn out of the public budget as well as the pockets of utility ratepayers.
Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan: The Energy Future, Japan Focus , Son Masayoshi with an introduction by Andrew DeWit, 19 Sept 11 Introduction “……..In fact, the fight over Japan’s energy options is not at all ended. The nuclear village’s effort to portray Fukushima as merely a setback has failed in the face of the facts, of course.
Among recent surveys results, we find those that indicate as much as 100,000,000 m³ of Fukushima’s topsoil has been irradiated by the meltdowns, an enormous quantity whose disposal, both its logistics and its cost, simply staggers the mind. In the meantime, the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry (METI) is in a struggle with the financial institutions that lent trillions of yen to TEPCO and now want the state to ensure that they are completely reimbursed.
The nuclear village and its hired guns in the academic and administrative and political sectors have worked together to craft a mechanism through which compensation will almost inevitably be torn out of the public budget as well as the pockets of utility ratepayers. The ricketiness of the scheme suggests it can only hold together if the 10 regional monopolized utilities and their risky nuclear assets are maintained largely as is. It is thus easy to understand why the establishment is furious at Son’s effort to apply “creative destruction” to their vested interests in Japan’s power markets….
The rebuild gives Japan the opportunity to rebuild smart, which has become common sense within the committees devising the plans for reconstruction. In fact, METI just released the results of one of its own in-house academic studies showing that Japan’s renewable energy and associated infrastructure businesses already reached YEN 30 trillion in 2010. The study also projects that the industry will expand to about ¥80 trillion by 2020. About 30% of this output is exports, giving Japan a very good base from which to build a robust and sustainable industry to help it defray the increasing costs of raw materials, foodstuffs and other imports.
A smart approach to rebuilding the devastated area could serve as a template for restructuring power markets within Japan. This needs to be done, as the International Energy Association argues, because Japan is balkanized into 10 regional and monopolized utilities that have very little interaction among each other as a power market. Son in fact proposed a YEN 2 trillion plan for this kind of “supergid” at the inauguration of his Japan Renewable Energy Foundation…….. http://japanfocus.org/-Andrew-DeWit/3603
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