ABSTRACT
Galvanized in particular through international embarrassment at Fukushima Daiichi’s repeated releases of radiation-laced water into the sea, Japan has ramped up its renewable energy and efficiency initiatives. On September 8, 2013, in the wake of the International Olympic Commission’s vote to award the 2020 Summer Olympics to Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo committed his cabinet to “make every effort to accelerate the spread of renewable energy sources and promote energy conservation” (Asahi Shimbun, September 14, 2013). The majority of Japan’s local governments, central agencies and private sector had already been making progress on various sustainability projects. This chapter argues that national politics impedes Japan from taking the lead in the swiftly evolving global transition towards building resilient green communities (Orr 2012). Japan’s monopolized electricity utilities are at the core of vested interests impeding reforms that are key to this transition. These interests dominate the central government’s policy-making councils and national politicians’ calculus of what is viable (see Chapters 7 and 8). The central government thus plays an ambivalent role despite the need for more aggressive and coordinated commitments to renewable energy and efficiency. The core of the ongoing paradigm shift is smart and distributed renewable power,
“one of the greatest technological challenges industrialized societies have undertaken” (Resnick Institute 2012). Deploying distributed power is essential to mitigating and adapting to climate change’s mounting toll on energy and transport infrastructure, agriculture, and much of what we take for granted in contemporary society. Globally, civilian and military projects are realizing a green resilience the magnitude of which already reaches into the trillions of dollars (Nikkei BP 2010; PEW Research Center 2013; SBI Energy 2012). Post-Fukushima Japan also has ample reasons to reconsider its energy mix due to
concerns over nuclear safety and its high cost. It has the capacity to undertake vanguard renewable and energy efficiency initiatives through its still-potent economic strengths, coupled with innovative capital, leading-edge technologies and activist cityregions. These factors have the potential to pull Japan into the front ranks of building resilience, diffusing sustainable growth among cities and depressed regions alike (Mizobata 2013). America’s military-centered energy industrial policy regime, focused on renewables and efficiency, is clear evidence that decisive and even disruptive state intervention is essential (DeWit 2013b), but rapid progress in Japan depends, most of all, on overcoming vested interests’ capacity to obstruct change.
