Subsidies for renewable power suppliers spur spending rush

"public calling for a future without nuclear power" I like it! I like it alot! Don't forget about hydrogen plant technology has yet to be mastered.

What a waste of money, especially in days of fiscal crisis. It would be far better (and cheaper) to put that money into nuclear power, and let private industry develop other methods over the natural course of time. Forcing companies (and therefore consumers) to pay four TIMES the normal rate for electricity that comes from so-called 'renewable' sources is ridiculous.

Despite the initial burst of investment, some are skeptical.

“I don’t think the share of renewable energy sources, including hydro, in electricity will exceed 20 percent because, for example, it requires some 3,000 times more area to put solar panels on than a combined cycle gas power plant,” said Akira Ishii, senior visiting researcher in oil and gas business at state-backed Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp.

An oil and gas believer would be skeptical, wouldn't he?

Photovoltaic panels and tiles have been around now for a while and the cost has come down. But architects for modern homes are not using them in their designs. It is possible for homes to be self sufficient in electricity with excess being bought by the utility companies. What is the point of technology if you don't use it.

I personally believe that Japan is at last taking the right path to the future, lessening dependedncy on nuclear and non-renewable fossil fuel.

And to Mr. Akira Ishii, I do believe he should know more than anyone that the world's reserves for oil and gas are fast drying up, and may totally be gone within a few decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserves-to-production_ratio

Fantastic. Now spend 1/53 as much as you have with nuclear and direct it to renewable subsidies and then you'll get an even stronger return on your tax dollar. Fair is fair.

Subsidies for renewable power suppliers spur spending rush

When a gvt shifts energy policy to accelerating renewables, it should be a complete renewables support package including research, capacity building, huge national campaigns, etc. The sleeping innovative mojo of the japanese should be reawakened. For instance I wish to see solar panels that occupy less space but produce same or more energy, more powerful solar energy storage cells, or having eco-village pilot projects with all renewables energy, establishing a renewables energy university and teaching youth about renewables in schools, etc. How about wind energy? They should also not make a mistake of companies monopolizing distribution and generation of energy. Germany is doing all this and far more .....

Germany's scaring example

I see a lot of praise for the German "Energiewende" in some of the comments. As a German, I am witnessing how this works out, and I advice all daydreamers to take an objective and unbiased look at the Germany example. The reality is this: replacing fossil and nuclear energy with so-called "renewables" (there is no renewability in nature) means replacing an efficient energy system with an inefficient one. It is inefficient by nature, because wind, solar, biomass have a very low energy density. The worst of all is biomass; transforming solar energy via bio mass to fuel or electricity has an efficiency of less than 1 percent. In today's Germany, corn for bio energy grows on millions of hectares to contribute just a few percent of German energy consumption.

Renewable energy facilities are more expensive, require larger amounts of all sorts of raw materials and cover large areas. The German citizens have already paid several hundred of billion euro for wind, solar and bio energy facilities. What they received is an unreliable supply which cannot replace the closed nuclear plants. Instead the country has turned from an exporter of electricity to an importer (Where would Japan import electricity from?). Some more facts: Germany has the second-highest electricity prices in Europe, an increasing burden for households and industry. The annual capacity factor for windmills is about 15% and for solar is 8% on average (the best nuclear plants have 90%). Large back-up capacities (about 80% of the renewable capacities) are needed. Coal and natural gas plants have to provide them. Anything else for back-up is an illusion.

Germany has by now more than 25.000 wind mills. Several times as many are needed to replace nuclear energy. More and more windmills (up to 200 meters high) are being constructed in forests, on mountain ridges, in natural parks, in areas which before were designated as landscape and nature protection areas. An additional negative impact will be provided by several thousand kilometers of new high-voltage transmission lines. Renewable energies have resulted in an unprecedented thorough and sustainable uglification of the country.

This list of cruelties could be continued. In Germany, the real and ugly implications of large-scale renewable energy production are becoming more and more obvious. And an increasing number of people is becoming more and more skeptic. Japan would be ill-advised to also move into this dead-end.

Many companies outside the traditional energy industry are keen to break into renewables. Mobile phone supplier Softbank plans to install 10 solar farms with total capacity of 182.2 megawatts (MW), and a 48 MW wind farm by March 2015. Two of its solar farms started commercial operation in July.

So I guess nobody has seen the fact it has gone down from 500MW to 250MW to now less than 200MW. By the time it is built, it will be just 100MW, and even if it stays the same as now produce only 0.2% of Hokkaido's electricity assuming 100% production in the winter months when it's needed most (impossible due to snow).

That adds up to 170 billion yen ($2.17 billion), assuming capital investment of 300 million yen per MW, an industry standard.

Even if Japan only replaces half of nuclear with solar, it's not a good number. That's 300 yen/W, and Japan needs about 150GW worth of panels to hit 50% of the 2010 nuclear production. That's 45 trillion yen, or roughly half a decade's worth of eduction spending.