Climate campaigner Kimiko Hirata on how to change Japan’s energy system

Kimiko Hirata is an inspiring figure as a climate campaigner in Japan. In face of the rigid inertia of the Japanese government to implement effective and immediate climate-positive action, she is pushing the nation forward. Her work includes successfully rousing grassroots communities to halt the construction of 17 planned coal-fired power plants. We talked to Hirata about Japan’s energy policy, what it’s doing wrong, and what we can do to make it right.

Interviewee Profile: Kimiko Hirata

Kimiko Hirata is the International Director of the environment NGO Kiko Network. In June 2021 she was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for the work she has done with the NGO to prevent climate change. In 2020, she introduced the first climate-based motion to be put to shareholders of a listed company in Japan. She focused heavily on policy since joining Kiko Network in 1998. In December 2021, she announced that while she will remain a director of Kiko Network, she was leaving the group to set up a new organization to work against climate change: climateintegrate.org.

Over the century or so that Japan has been using electricity in its homes, the nation has developed a complex about its lack of natural energy resources. A 2020 brochure from the government’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy includes the line, “Japan is a country with limited natural resources.” Indeed, the nation’s energy self-sufficiency ratio in 2018 was just 11.8%, the second lowest level among the 35 OECD nations. However, this complex is based on the idea—and the current reality—that electric power generation in Japan is dependent on the use of fossil fuel.

Hirata, who is the international director of climate NGO Kiko Network, sees Japan differently. “It’s the country that is most capable, don’t you think?” she says of the mountainous, volcanic, water-rich archipelago as she mentions the renewable energy options that other countries are using to mitigate their use of fossil fuels; solar power, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal.

But Japan’s policy makers—its politicians and captains of key carbon-emitting industries—are putting all that potential to waste by stubbornly sticking to the status quo, and to short-term profits, she says.

“Until now, stable supply, particularly via a baseload energy source that can continuously supply power on a large-scale has been regarded as important,” Hirata explains. “But amid the problem of climate change, considering that most of Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions come from energy use, that issue can’t be solved via the system of stable supply that has existed until now, a changeover needs to occur.”

The biggest problem, she says, is that in Japan there is no resolve to make that happen. Japan is lagging behind as the world slowly shuffles toward the paradigm shift in energy creation that we need to stave off global warming.

Japan’s current energy plan

Japan’s latest Strategic Energy Policy Plan was approved by the cabinet in October 2021. For the first time, the plan, which is in its sixth edition, includes the term “carbon neutral” and treats climate change as a domestic energy issue, notes Hirata in the limited praise she has for the plan. “But on the question of whether Japan is really trying to solve climate change, when you look at the contents, there are many doubts about that,” she says.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry says the plan has been formulated with two key goals. The first is to indicate an approach to energy policy that will lead to the achievement of carbon neutrality by 2050 and a target to cut greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 46% in 2030 compared with 2013 levels.

The new plan sets forth an increase in renewable energy use to around 37% in 2030, from the previous plan for 23%, and a steep cut in fossil fuel usage to 41% from an actual ratio of 76% use in 2019. Nuclear power makes up the bulk of the remainder, with no change to the plan for around 21%.

The second goal of the energy plan is to maintain Japan’s long-running 3E+S policy. The three Es stand for Energy Security (self-sufficiency), Economic Efficiency (reducing electricity costs), and the Environment. The S stands for safety and was added after reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant after it was damaged by a tsunami in 2011. The incident led to widespread distrust of nuclear energy among the public. Many of the nuclear plants that were halted back then over safety concerns are still not back up and running.

Obvious needs, misplaced focus, outdated thinking

In terms of energy self-sufficiency, it seems obvious that Japan should shift from imported fossil fuels to homegrown green energy. The catch here is that the nation’s leaders have interpreted energy security to mean constant, stable, bulk supply. As for the equation of economic efficiency with fossil fuels, which receive some government subsidies, it is outdated thinking, says Hirata.

“Other issues that are being raised as problems are really just excuses for not making the change. Things such as cost, instability of renewable energy, not enough space in little Japan for renewable facilities. This stuff has been said for 20, 30 years. Costs have dropped worldwide and the world is heading toward working out how to construct energy systems with the flexibility to overcome the instability of renewable energy supply,” Hirata says. “The only issue that remains is whether or not the will exists to do it.”

Judging by its performance at the COP26 climate change conference in November, Japan’s leaders do not have the will to end its fossil-fuel use. It did not sign on to statements to end coal-fired plants by the 2030s and to halt financing for fossil fuel development overseas. In his address to the conference, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made no mention of the key U.N. goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, just as the country’s new energy plan does not mention it.

One of the main ways the Japanese government says it will reduce fossil fuel usage is via innovation. It is working on shifting to an ammonia and hydrogen-based society, and is exploring carbon recycling and carbon capture and storage techniques. Hirata voices skepticism as she points to a plan to mix ammonia and hydrogen with coal or gas at thermal power stations, ostensibly with the aim of reducing GHG emissions. Instead, she says, it ensures the use of coal until well toward 2050.

What Japan needs now is leadership

The problem with this lack of national leadership is that changing a country’s energy system involves more than just a flick of a switch—a lot more. It requires fundamental changes to infrastructure that will greatly affect how we live. Some will be affected more than others, like the fossil-fuel industry workers and the neighbors of new, local, green-energy power generation sites. That is why the government’s role is crucial, Hirata says, and why “green new deals” that include social measures are needed.

It will not be easy. But not making this change will ensure disaster, and delaying it will do the same. The Assessment Report that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in August says, “Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.” In September, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told government ministers, “Irreversible climate tipping points lie alarmingly close.” Phasing out coal is the most effective step for limiting global temperature rise, he said.

Kiko Network’s policy proposal uses renewable resources to end the use of coal by 2030 in order to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius to limit the damage to humans from climate change.

What Japan needs to switch to renewable energy

Until now, power generation in Japan, and most of the world, has been centralized at large-scale power plants that transmit a constant supply of electricity to cities far away. As critics of renewable energy have long pointed out, its supply is not constant: the sun does not always shine and wind does not always blow. But, by employing a variety of renewable energy sources they can cover for each other, says Hirata.

“As well as solar and wind, there’s also geothermal and hydroelectric, which produce relatively stable electricity supply, so it can be done by increasing that volume and using a mechanism of flexible adjustment” that caters to our flexible consumption of electricity, Hirata says. She notes that some countries are already doing it, forecasting the weather for the following day and adjusting supply according to that.

This approach shifts energy creation to the distributed generation model. This is when a variety of technologies generate electricity at or near where it will be used. They may be connected to electric power utilities’ distribution lines. Under this model, smaller companies can also create energy, do business locally and use electricity locally.

“It will change the way that companies operate, and the way that industry operates,” Hirata says. “Current players see that as taking business away from them, and they don’t want to accept it.”

How to end the cycle of inequitable energy

In 2012, Japan began a Feed-In Tariff policy to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy. It was successful in bringing a large number of new companies into the energy generation business, including some citizen-based projects. But it also attracted companies that were seeking fast profits and led to problems such as solar panels slipping off hillsides. Part of the cause of these cases was a lack of governmental leadership.

A 2017 report on the tariffs by the Renewable Energy Institute cited insufficient consideration of the environmental impacts of developments, noting that environmental impact assessments “are not required for solar PV (photovoltaic) regardless of the scale.” Greater oversight has since been introduced, but the damage caused by such projects spurred opposition among some local communities to renewable energy developments.

Hirata says that even now renewable energy projects in communities mostly involve large companies from Tokyo that seem to suddenly erect solar panels, for example, in the forest and take the electricity and the profit away with them.

“It’s true that there are difficult aspects going forward in terms of how to increase solar energy and wind energy in symbiosis with local communities. To achieve that, we need to promote renewable energy in a manner that has merit for the local people themselves,” Hirata says.

Getting locals involved in energy decisions

In June 2021, Hirata was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her efforts to end the use of coal-fired power plants in Japan. Her grassroots work led to the cancellation of 17 of the 50 coal power plants that were planned for construction after all the nation’s nuclear plants were closed over safety concerns following the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. Her work prevented the emission of more than 1.6 billion tons of CO2, the equivalent of taking 7.5 million passenger cars off the road every year for 40 years.

In 2020, also as part of Kiko Network, she led a shareholders motion at the annual general meeting of one of Japan’s leading banks, Mizuho Financial Group, Inc., to align its business to the Paris Agreement to fight climate change. It was the first time a climate motion had been put to shareholders of a listed company in Japan. It received more than a third of the votes, which was not enough for it to be formally adopted, but it had influence. Many large Japanese companies have since announced a move away from coal.

Hirata’s urgency to stop the construction of those new coal-fired power plants changed her from a policy wonk to a grassroots campaigner. She knew that only the local people could stop a plant development. They would have to learn about the plant and its risks, consider if they wanted it or not, and then raise their own voices. Kiko Network did what it could to help.

“We spent time talking with the locals. It took years, but once they learned about the problem, the locals started staying things like ‘Is that going to be in our area?’ or ‘It’s got no mutual benefit at all.’ The local people started taking action, and those local people started talking to other local people,” Hirata explains.

Eventually local media also started to pay attention, then members of parliament did, too. Hirata says that although she helped sow the seeds, it was the local community taking action themselves that stopped the plan.

Challenges facing NGOs in Japan

Activism is not as well accepted in Japan as it is in other countries. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are not well understood and their employees are viewed as people who just go around complaining, Hirata says.

In Japan’s highly conformist society, it can be difficult for people to protest. “Criticizing the government or complaining to it is thought of as not being a good thing. So everyone feels they have no choice but to do what is expected,” Hirata says.

She points out that in stopping the planned power plants, there were no huge demonstrations like those sometimes seen in other countries. Only a dozen or so locals acted as the core of each campaign, she says. They were extremely committed people, and it was their work that created the change, she says. It suggests that a dynamic exists in Japan whereby since public criticism is rare, it can be effective.

Hirata thinks that the public’s lack of interest in climate issues is partly caused by the government. Like people everywhere, Japanese are concerned about climate change and see its effects in their lives through dangerous summer temperatures and flood-causing heavy rains. But the government has taught them that energy conservation is the key to combating it, Hirata says.

“People don’t know what they can do beyond that,” she explains. “They also don’t think they have the power to change such a big thing. So, they regard issues that exceed their own daily lives as not being their problem, and they shut down their thinking.” As a result, politicians and companies think the public is not interested in climate change.

Shifting Japan to a new model of climate action

Like many people around the world, Japanese people have been very good at making small changes to reduce their damage to the environment. But these individual actions, like reducing waste and carrying a refillable drink bottle, are not enough. The problem is our social and economic systems. To change them, we each need to boost our level of influence.

There are many ways to do this, Hirata says. “Each person is a member of society and is connected to various social systems and involved in various organizations, like school, the workplace, a local community or hobby groups. Maybe you can make that organization carbon-neutral. And if you face difficulty, work out what the problem is and talk to politicians about it, or with uncooperative businesses. Expanding the scope of what you are able to achieve as a member of society is key,” Hirata says.

Hirata also wants us to learn about the issues. Knowledge gives us greater choices and more ways to take action. Once you know that coal is the world’s dirtiest energy resource you can see that conserving energy is a good thing, but one that will not fix the problem. Find an electricity provider that uses renewable resources instead. Do something that you haven’t done until now. Make this issue part of your life, Hirata says.

At the COP conference in November, many observers were disappointed by the lack of actionable results. But it is unrealistic to expect others to take action when we are not doing so ourselves. It is time for each of us to step up and act.

It is also time to talk about energy production and to make the issue part of our daily lives. Our problems with power generation will continue as long as we view it as dirty and unwelcome, as something to confine to someone else’s backyard or to hide away in disadvantaged areas like Fukushima. Japan needs energy it can be proud of—clean energy that achieves Japan’s 3E+S goals.

Read hints from Kimiko Hirata on how to create social change in this companion article: How to create social change, with climate campaigner Kimiko Hirata.