Japan to reverse decline of renewable energy – Renewables declined from 25% to 10%

Japan to reverse decline of renewable energy. The ratio of renewable power generation has decreased from 25% of total electricity generation in 1970 to 10% today. Extremely aggressive feed-in tariffs (FIT) for renewable energy introduced in July 2012 are showing first modest results to reverse this trend – initially solar energy projects dominate FIT projects, since solar projects are fastest to build.

Larger projects, such as off-shore wind power, or geo-thermal projects, take a very much longer time to plan and build – on the order of 10 years or longer. More below and in our report on “Renewable energy in Japan”.

Over the years, electricity generation from nuclear and thermal sources has grown much faster than from renewable sources in Japan. As a result, electricity generation from renewable resources has dropped from around 25% in 1970 to around 10% in 2012. In 2012, Japan’s Government and industry associations have announced aggressive plans to reverse this trend

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This figure shows all electricity generation in Japan from renewable sources: Japan currently relies overwhelmingly on water power for renewable energy, which varies between 5% of total electricity in winter and around 12%-15% of total in summer, with an overall decrease since 2006. The figure shows that other renewable energy sources (wind, solar, geo-thermal and bio-mass) are still in the very early stages of development.

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