Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Japan has the third-largest installed solar capacity in the world, but it may soon find itself sliding down the ranks for a variety of reasons.
At the end of the last year, Japan’s cumulative solar capacity reached 78.5GW, putting it far behind China but nearly at the same level as the United States.
In the wake of the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan put strong emphasis on the expansion of solar, boosting it with very generous feed-in tariffs, and by 2015 there was more than 10GW of new capacity coming online each year.
However, the administration of Shinzo Abe de-emphasized this rapid expansion of solar, reduced the feed-in tariffs, and focused more of its attention on trying to restart nuclear power plants, against public opposition and with only limited success.
Under Abe, the yearly solar installations began to decline to about half of the 2015 peak.
But solar’s challenges have not been limited to the long reign of an administration for which renewable energy development was not a key priority. There are also problems inherent in the technology itself.
As many locals will proudly remark, Japan has four seasons. This presents a serious challenge for the solar power industry because the nation’s electricity grid faces relatively high demand from businesses and households in the summer and winter, but relatively weak demand in the mild spring and autumn seasons.
In the long-run, this problem can be alleviated by the development of battery technologies and other storage systems that can keep the energy available until it is needed by the market.
For now, however, it creates a difficult dilemma for the major Japanese utilities. The electricity grid requires a basic balance between supply and demand, or else the nation faces the possibility of widespread power outages.
One after another, starting with Kyushu Electric Power Company in 2018, the regional utilities have been forced to implement output power controls, temporarily suspending their renewable energy feeds from households and start-ups in the milder seasons.
In consequence, power companies that lean heavily on solar and wind power may find themselves unable to recoup their investments for the periods when their energy is not required, and thus disrupting their business performances and splashing cold water on further renewable energy development.
Nevertheless, the Japanese government began reemphasizing renewable energy development, including solar, under the administration of Yoshihide Suga and into the current administration, as part of its international commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
And so, solar energy growth is expected to continue; estimates suggest that Japan may possess about 150GW of installed solar power capacity by the end of this decade.
Additionally, there is likely to be a brisk expansion of alternative business models employing solar, such as onsite corporate power purchase agreements, in which independent power producers sell energy directly to specific clients.
Nevertheless, with many other nations also strongly interested in solar, and the technology becoming more affordable, Japan is unlikely to keep its No. 3 global ranking for very long, even if the Fukushima disaster helped it get off the starting line quickly in the 2010s.
Recent Solar Energy Related Articles
