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Japan under fire for slashing greenhouse gas emission target

Jakarta Post - November 16, 2013

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M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – The United Nations climate talks in Warsaw, Poland, suffered a severe blow on Friday with Japan announcing that it will drastically lower its greenhouse-gas reduction target as a response to the closure of nuclear power plants following the Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

The Japanese government has decided to target a 3.8 percent cut in CO2 emissions by 2020 versus 2005 levels. That amounts to a 3 percent rise from 1990 levels – a sharp reversal of the previous target of a 25 percent reduction, the benchmark level for climate talks.

"Given that none of the nuclear reactors are operating, this was unavoidable," Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara told reporters.

Condemnation against the world's third largest economy after the United States and China were swift for the turnaround. Four years ago in Bangkok, the Japanese delegation got a standing ovation at a UN talk, when then Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama announced the 25-percent reduction target.

Green groups around the world are expected to stage a protest in front of the the embassies of Japan across the globe.

The decision also cast a renewed doubt if the Warsaw climate talks, also called the COP19, could yield any significant results when environment ministers from around the world arrived in the Polish capital next week.

The green group Climate Action Network (CAN) staged a press briefing on the sidelines of the Warsaw meeting during which it gave an inflatable dinosaur to Japan and the "Fossil Fuel Award of the Day" in an apparent move to shame the Asian giant.

"This is totally destructive and Japan are betraying these people [activists who have fought for reduced emission]," Kimiko Hirata from CAN Japan told the press conference.

Hirata condemned the new announcement, saying that it indicated Japan's reluctance to cut emissions. "In 2012, C02 from energy increased 7.5 percent from 2010, Japan in fact increased emissions in spite of nuclear energy since 1990. It shows neither nuclear nor fossil is a solution," she said.

A coalition of Japanese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) called on the Japanese government to withdraw the new emission target and resubmit an ambitious reduction target. "The target is not a reduction target, but an emission increase target," the coalition said in a statement.

It also said that the new target would have a dampening effect on the negotiation process in Warsaw. "An emission increase target in this context will throw cold water onto this discussion," the coalition said.

Natural-gas consumption by Japan's 10 utilities was up 8.4 percent in October from a year earlier and coal use was up 4.4 percent as the companies used more fossil fuels to compensate for the nuclear shutdown, the industry data showed on Friday.