In response to Andrew DeWit and Paul Midford who pointed to renewables in Germany to say that the DPJ is being realistic when it made a goal of 30-35% of electricity from renewables within two decades:

Regard this as "thinking out loud" by someone who has not seriously studied the topic and who will certainly accept correction of fact or logic. I apologize for the length; for those just interested in Japanese info, it's strewn thoughout.

Germany has set a target of the renewable share of electricity consumption to 35% by 2020, 45% by 2030 and 80% by 2050, while reducing CO2 emissions 40% below
1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.
A cursory look suggests that this is far easier said than done, and that the attempt has very high costs.

In 2011, when renewables provided 20% of electrcity, the main sources of electricity from renewables were wind (38%), biomass (26%), hydro (16%) and photovoltaic solar (16%).

First, keep in mind that, in the effort to phase out nuclear, Germany is widely projected to increase the use of the deadliesst form of energy--coal--from 42% of electricity generation to more than 50%, according to the German Institute for Economic Research. According to the National Association of Energy and Water, nearly 40% (14,000 of the 36,000 megawatts) of NEW electricity generation capacity being planned for Germany will be fueled by coal. Coal consumption has increased 5% since Merkel announced the plan to end nuclear by 2022. How Germany expects to reduce carbon emissions while replacing nuclear with coal over the next decade is a mystery to me.

Wind power, as I understand it, is highly dependent on local conditions onshore and offshore, and so I don't know whether Germany's results can be replicated in Japan. According to one source, Rhine-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research, the feed-in-tariff for wind now requires customers to pay around 3 times the cost of conventional electricity.

Biomass is, all too often, just a fancy word for wood and dung. It is more deadly than natural gas, and far more deadly than nuclear, though certainly less so than oil or coal. According to the Lancet article I cited the other day, deaths per terawatthours from nuclear power are 0.052 but biomass is 90 times more deadly at 4.63, and twice as deadly as natural gas at 2.8. As for serious and chronic illness, for biomass it's 43 cases per terawatthour vs. 0.22 for nuclear and 30 for natural gas.

Japan consumes about 1,000 TWH per year, so, according to the Lancet figures based on European experience, in the pre-Fukushima days--when coal generated 27% of Japan's electricity, oil 9%, gas 27% and nuclear 27% (the other 10% being mostly hydro)--almost 9,000 people died every year from the pollution caused by fossil fuels. Most of them (6,566) died from coal use. Nuclear killed 14. 9,000 is as many people dying every year as the total number projected by the World Health Organization to die in the 40 years following the 1987 Chernobyl accident. With almost all nuclear plants shut-down, and being replaced by thermal fuel, the number of death is significantly higher now.

Biomass also releases huge amounts of global warming gases. In fact, some studies show that traditional biomass in developing countries may release more carbon emissions than oil or coal. To mitigate the the global warming from biomass, e.g. by carbon recapture, is very expensive. The feed-in-tariff for biomass appears to be about 50% higher than for wind, so perhaps 5 times the cost of onventional power (based on report of Rhine-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research). It also causes deforestation in countries like Germany, which, in turns, leads to less CO2 absorption and more global warming, and cutting so many trees raises issues of sustainability. A third of trees cut down in Germany today are used to supply energy. Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council support use of biomass that comes from waste and reside left over from farming, but not from cutting down trees (see
http://tinyurl.com/9knt6a4 and
http://preview.tinyurl.com/8fnpjqh)

A 2009 study from RWI Essen concluded that , under Germany's feed-in-tariff system, using solar photovoltaics is 53 times more expensive than the European Union Emission Trading Scheme's market price.
Again, some countries are more suitable to solar energy than others, as this stage of the engineering game. My understanding is that one of the big problems with solar power is that you need a ton of square meters of solar cells to produce X amount of energy. Then there is the scientific problem of electricity storage. These problems are not easily overcome just by making today's solar cells more cheaply.

What are the total costs of Germany's program and who pays them? Estimates vary wildly (see
http://tinyurl.com/32ub8c6 ). The official estimate of the German Ministry of Economics is about $75 billion over the next decade, beyond what has already been invested. By contrast, the unofficial estimates of the Economics ministry, the Rhenish-Westphalian Institute for Economic Research (RWI), German Energy Agency (DENA), Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV), and the government-owned development bank (KfW), put the cost at about $340 Billion--five times the official estimate--over the next decade; that's about 10% of a year's GDP. Siemens, which now earns a third of its revenue from providing renewable energy products, estimates that the total cost of the renewables campaign will add up to $1.8 trillion by 2030. That's equal to half of a year's GDP and, over two decades, 18 times the official estimate for costs in the next decade.

Who's going to pay this cost and how? On the grounds that forcing companies to pay higher electricity rates would cost jobs, most of the cost is being borne by household customers. The cost of electricity is now becoming a big political issue in Germany a year before national elections and leading for some calls to put a break on the program. A reported 10% of the population had problems paying the higher bills and, reportedly, several hundred thousand people have had their energy cut off for nonpayment of bills due to the higher costs.

Now, let's look at Japan. The DPJ's plan is to spend about Y50 trillion yen on renewables. That would equal more than 10% of a year's GDP. Then, there would be another Y100 trillion in conservation measures, another 20% of GDP. I'm not sure over what timeframe, but if it's being done to meet the 2030 goal, the spending on renewables alone would cost more than the entire revenue to be obtained from hiking the consumption tax.
Again, who is going to pay this cost, and how will the money be extracted from them: higher electricty rates, higher taxes? And this assumes that the cost is accurate.

Moreover, like Germany, Japan is building coal-fired plants since coal costs less than LNG or oil. Again, I can't see how this coheres with carbon emissions goals, let alone current health concerns. Nikkei
(http://tinyurl.com/9hruvjx) reports:

>The government is looking to make coal-fired power
plants easier to build and expand by relaxing its procedures for assessing their environmental
>impact....Tokyo Electric Power Co., which plans to
construct coal-fired plants as an alternative to nuclear plants, is expected to file for approval as early as next >year under new [environmental] assessment procedures.<

I am sure there are counterarguments to everything I've said. But when something seems too good to be true, it usually is. The cost of a rapid Japanese phase-out of nuclear power will be very high in both health and economic terms. Some people might consider that cost worth paying to avoid the risk of a disaster that could dwarf even Fukushima. Before taking that step, I'd first rather see if there is a way to make nuclear safe for Japan (or Japan safe for nuclear).

Richard Katz
The Oriental Economist Report