Japan is pushing for a “realistic” approach to reaching net zero

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Four weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Japan proposed an initiative which he hoped would bring Asian countries together to tackle climate goals without sacrificing economic growth.

Then, when the war shocked energy markets and forced Germany and other European Union nations to restart their mothballed coal-fired plants, Tokyo officials grew quietly more optimistic about a regional effort to tackle global warming.

“For Asia, we need to have as many energy options as possible for their stable supply,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in March when Japan hosted its first ministerial meeting with Australia and southern countries. East Asian climate initiative, known as the Asia Zero Emissions Community. “That is why it is crucial to pursue a realistic path for the energy transition.”

The core of Tokyo’s argument is that Asia, which accounts for about half of global carbon emissions and is home to the world’s youngest generation of coal-fired power plants, faces different environmental challenges than Europe or the North America, and therefore the pace of its transition to meet climate goals should also be different.

That stance, according to some Japanese officials, has been strengthened after the Ukraine crisis sparked a global debate about how quickly countries should switch to cleaner forms of energy. Germany, for example, has temporarily restarted coal-fired power plants and has been in talks with Senegal about fossil fuel exploration.

Asia’s claim to be in a “unique situation” is based on the fact that its economies are at an earlier stage of development than those of the West and that its fossil fuel infrastructure is closer to the beginning than the end of his life, compared with the United States and Europe. And it’s shaping Japan’s stance on climate talks as global leaders head to the G7 summit. But it is already proving divisive at a time when the world’s most advanced economies must respond to the criticisms they stand reverse on their climate goals following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Critics say Tokyo’s attempt to shape energy transition efforts in Asia seems selfish and is simply an extension of its earlier argument that Japan should be treated differently due to the circumstances caused by the 2011 tsunami and the nuclear disaster. This has forced the country to increase its dependence on coal, natural gas and oil.

The energy and environment ministers of the G7 countries have now pledged to accelerate their shift to renewable energy. Member nations also pledged to “achieve a fully or predominantly decarbonised energy sector by 2035,” but again failed to set a firm timeline for exiting coal due to continued opposition from host nation Japan.

“At the G7 meeting, we recognized that different countries around the world have different economic and energy situations, and the path to carbon neutrality by 2050 should be different,” said Yasutoshi Nishimura, Japan’s economy minister, of the trade and industry meeting after the ministerial meeting in the northern city of Sapporo in April.

Indeed, the difficult negotiations ahead of the Sapporo meeting have exposed sharp divisions within the G7, with the United Kingdom, France and Canada pushing back against Japan’s promotion of ammonia as a low-carbon energy source alongside gas or coal to reduce emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure.

While ammonia itself is not a greenhouse gas, its production is heavily dependent on fossil fuels and is not yet commercially viable.

Still, promoting ammonia and hydrogen as emissions-cutting tools is a pillar of Kishida’s $1.1 trillion climate strategy, known as GX, which officials want to highlight when Japan chairs the summit. of the G7 this weekend. These are also technologies Japan wants to sell to countries in the global South to help them replace coal in existing power plants with ammonia.

However, environmental groups are still hoping the G7 will take bolder steps, rather than letting Japan push its own domestic agenda. They want a commitment to the goals of the Paris Agreement, which says countries will seek to limit global temperature rise to less than 2°C and ideally 1.5°C.

G7 nations failed to set firm timeline to exit coal last month due to strong opposition from Japan

“At the very least, I hope they stick to their ministerial-level commitments,” says Kimiko Hirata, executive director and founder of Climate Integrate, a non-profit group.

After the meeting in Sapporo, people with knowledge of the discussions said that Germany insisted on wording in the final communiqué that it supported public investment in the gas sector, drawing opposition from other member states who said it was incompatible with climate goals.

Hirata says he pays attention to whether the G7 is able to remove the word “predominantly” from its pledge for a decarbonised energy sector by 2035, which would eliminate the possibility of continued use of fossil fuel energy.

“It is of the utmost importance that G7 leaders go one step further to reach an ambitious agreement in order to advance discussions with developing countries at the next G20 summit and at COP28 [climate summit in the UAE]”, he argues.

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