ABSTRACT
The Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster reaffirmed the vital importance of electricity. Immediately after the earthquake, more than eight million households lost power as the result of extensive damage to power plants, substations, and power lines caused by the earthquake and tsunami. Efforts to bring these plants back online were initially ineffective. Accordingly, power-generation capacity was unable to meet demand, leading to the implementation of rolling blackouts in the Tokyo metropolitan area from March 14 to March 28. The nuclear accident at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) also raised concerns about the safety of all nuclear power plants, leading to a nationwide suspension of operations that, in turn, forced a number of out-of-operation thermal power plants to be brought back online to make up for the energy-supply deficit. According to the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (2013), greatly increased imports of natural gas and oil are estimated to have increased fuel costs for power generation by 2.3 trillion yen in 2011 and 3.1 trillion yen in 2012. Since Japan imports nearly all of its fossil fuels, these increased expenditures have serious consequences for the nation’s balance of trade.
