Where does Shigeru Ishiba stand on the climate issue?

While his views on defense garnered most of the headlines during last month’s Liberal Democratic Party leadership campaign, where Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba stands on energy-related issues is the focal point for climate experts and activists.

The early indications are that Japan’s new leader may depart from some, but not all, of his predecessor’s policies.

In some respects, Ishiba’s views on how to deal with the crucial issue of climate change and meet emissions targets seem mostly in line with those of former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, especially with the use of nuclear power.

On the other hand, Ishiba appears to be charting a different course on renewable energy, especially with a nascent effort to expand an energy source Japan has in abundance but has yet to really utilize: geothermal power.

If it survives the challenge of the Oct. 27 Lower House election — which is not a guarantee after mixed polling results in the early days of the prime minister’s tenure — the Ishiba administration won’t have long to formulate its climate policies before facing the international spotlight.

The annual United Nations climate conference is taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from Nov. 11 to 22, giving Ishiba and his Cabinet — or their successors — a little over two weeks after the election to prepare for a stage on which Japan’s fossil fuel-friendly climate policies have been the subject of domestic and international criticism.

The focus of this year’s COP is expected to be on green finance and the provision of funds for emerging economies to move away from fossil fuel technologies and into renewable energy in order to help meet the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement, which aims to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius — and ideally 1.5 C.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delivers a statement during the COP28 climate conference in Dubai in December of last year. New Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has mostly stuck with Kishida’s energy policies, but with some notable exceptions.
| Reuters

How much new financing will be pledged at COP29, and in what forms it will take, especially to countries already deeply in debt, is expected to be a key issue of debate among the delegates and heads of state who are expected to attend. Japan has not yet made it clear who will represent the country at the conference.

Another major area of discussion at COP29 is likely to be on the long contentious issue of how countries can credibly phase out fossil fuels, especially coal. At this year’s Group of Seven meeting of climate, energy and environment ministers, Japan and the other G7 members agreed to immediately reduce unabated coal power generation and phase out the use of unabated coal during the first half of 2030s or in a timeline consistent with keeping the 1.5 C goal within reach.

The key wording in the agreement is the use of “unabated coal,” which means coal plants could still run in the coming decades if they employ technologies like “carbon capture, utilization and storage” (CCUS) or ammonia-fired coal plants, technologies that are supposed to help reduce carbon emissions but which have proven expensive and difficult to implement in practice.

Japan, which has pushed back against G7 plans to set a firm end date for all uses of coal, has also been promoting the use of those technologies abroad, particularly in other parts of the region through its Asia Zero Emission Community (AZEC). A third of the 158 agreements Japan has signed under the agreement are linked to fossil fuel tech, according to a recent report by Zero Carbon Analytics.

Given the need to take quick action on a global scale to reach net-zero carbon emissions worldwide by 2050 — even a 0.5 C difference in warming significantly increases the chances of devastating extreme weather — critics say neither technology is a practical answer toward addressing climate change, and some say that ammonia co-firing is not as clean as its supporters say.

A thermal power plant in Taketoyo, Aichi Prefecture. Japan has pushed back against G7 plans to set a firm end date for all uses of coal.
| Jiji

Heading into COP29, the new prime minister is already facing pressure to not rely on abatement technologies, scrap coal completely and ramp up renewable energy usage at home and promote its use abroad.

“Ishiba has a chance to prove his mettle by committing to an ambitious, concrete, and time-bound renewable energy goal while phasing out fossil fuels, both domestically and abroad,” Norly Mercado, 350.org’s Asia Regional director, said in a statement.

In his policy speech on Oct. 4, Ishiba did not mention emissions reductions directly, speaking rather of the importance of realizing a “green transformation.”

While Kishida’s green transformation framework — known as “GX” — specifically included building new nuclear power plants, as well as using CCUS and ammonia-fired coal plants, Ishiba mostly spoke on the topic in more general terms.

“We’ll protect the Japanese economy from energy constraints with an optimal energy mix that includes geothermal and other renewable energies, for which Japan has great potential. We’ll make full use of nuclear power generation, and accelerate our efforts in the area of green transformation, and support the diverse efforts of Asian countries (to reduce carbon emissions) with Japan’s technological and financial capabilities,” Ishiba said.

Ishiba’s push for geothermal stands in contrast to the usual discussion in Japan over which renewable energy types to prioritize, as the majority of investment and effort has been directed toward solar and wind power. Kishida’s GX framework emphasized the role of offshore wind power, in particular.

Studies indicate that Japan is sitting on a lucrative renewable energy resource: A report by the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security concluded that Japan has the third-most geothermal potential in the world after the United States and Indonesia, but the resource plays a miniscule role in the energy mix of the world’s fourth-largest economy.

The nongovernmental Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies estimated that geothermal energy accounted for only 0.28% of Japan’s electricity generation in 2023. Progress in recent years has been relatively slow — the International Energy Agency’s 2023 report on Japan, released in July of this year, noted that after 2010, 70 small geothermal plants with capacities between 11 kilowatts and 720 kW were commissioned, while four larger plants of between 1.5 megawatts and 5 MW have been installed since 2015.

Much of Japan’s geothermal power lies in natural parks, and strict environmental regulations had long prevented drilling. However, the IEA report notes that the environmental regulations have been reworked, which is helping development.

Scaling up geothermal power, however, will require massive government investment and support, as well as likely further legal changes to allow for more drilling in protected areas.

In addition to protected natural parks, privately owned hot-spring resorts are also natural locations for geothermal plants. Many of these resorts, which tend to be influential in local politics, have long opposed drilling on their property for a geothermal plant.

A geothermal reservoir in Yuzawa, Akita Prefecture. By not making use of its geothermal energy potential, Japan is sitting on a lucrative renewable energy resource.
| Jiji

In 2013, in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster that prompted the country to take all of its nuclear plants offline, the National Association of Hot Springs Owners formally declared their opposition to geothermal power. The organization claimed that water used by geothermal power plants is forced back underground through a chemical process that damages the underground environment up to 3,000 meters below the area where a geothermal power plant is located.

The LDP’s policy platform for the upcoming election promises to make geothermal a party priority. It says that nuclear power and all renewable energy forms will be used to the maximum extent possible in order to meet the 2050 goal of net-zero carbon

Ishiba, however, is facing calls from environmental organizations in Japan to establish a new goal for 2035 and more ambitious targets for 2030 that are in line with what the latest scientific predictions say is needed to prevent catastrophic warming.

In addition, the government is currently in the process of reviewing its Strategic Energy Plan, which is supposed to be completed by the end of this year.

The current plan, adopted in 2021, includes a goal to reach net-zero by 2050 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 by 46% compared to 2013 levels. It also decided Japan’s 2030 energy mix, with a target of 36% to 38% for renewable energies, 20% to 22% for nuclear power, 20% for liquefied natural gas, 19% for coal, about 10% for hydrogen and ammonia and 2% for oil.

Whether the energy mix percentages will be revised, and to what degree, is likely to be a major subject of debate, especially between pronuclear advocates and those who worry about the economic costs of further fossil generated electricity, versus environmental advocates who cite the need to meet climate goals.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that, in order to have the best chance of limiting the rise of global average temperatures to 1.5 C above preindustrial levels by midcentury, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 compared with 2019 levels.

“As a developed country with the capacity and responsibility to reduce emissions, Japan should strengthen its 2030 target further and establish a new 2035 target, exceeding the reduction range indicated by the IPCC,” WWF Japan said in a statement on Oct. 2.

Whether it’s Ishiba at the helm following the election or someone else, the prime minister will have no shortage of issues to deal with in the run up to COP29.

Leaders from member states of the Japan-led Asia Zero Emission Community grouping in Vientiane, Laos, on Friday.
| Pool / via JIJI

At an AZEC meeting chaired by Ishiba in Laos on Friday, leaders adopted a 10-year plan that called for tripling renewable energy capacity globally, doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030, accelerating efforts toward the phasedown of unabated coal power, accelerating zero- and low-emission technologies and transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.

All of AZEC’s targets are to be done in a manner each country determines, taking into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances, pathways and approaches, the statement said.

“I look forward to tangible cooperation initiatives being implemented throughout AZEC partner countries in the future, in a way that is aligned with the AZEC principles,” Ishiba said.

But the statement, and Japan’s role in it, was criticized as a cop out that will just continue the use of fossil fuels.

“Instead of focusing on climate solutions, Japan has wasted precious time and resources peddling dirty, risky, expensive technologies that will expand and prolong the use of fossil fuels,” said Gerry Arances, a member of the Fossil Free Japan coalition.

“Southeast Asia has abundant renewable energy potential. Japan should concentrate its efforts on helping the region tap this if it is truly committed to decarbonization and assisting in a just energy transition.”