An overview of Japan's energy usage:
https://www.enerdata.net/estore/energy-market/japan/
Again all relatively good news, but is carbon neutrality by 2050 fast enough?Total energy consumption has been decreasing since 2010 (by 2%/year on average) to 420 Mtoe in 2019.
Slower economic growth coupled with structural trends in the transport sector (shift to electric cars and reduced car use among young generations) and the gradual phaseout of oil-fired power plants are reducing the oil demand.
Gas consumption increased by 21% following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 and has declined since 2013 by -2.2%/year on average.
Coal consumption is declining slightly since 2013, by 1%/year, and reached 186 Mt in 2019. It increased rapidly between 2000 and 2007 (3%/year) with most of the utilities switching to this cheap fuel.
In the government's latest Energy White Paper (2020), renewables are recognised as a major energy source for Japan's future. The plan aims to raise the share of renewables in the power mix to 22-24% (including hydropower) in 2030, with plans to make renewables Japan's main power source by 2050.
GHG emissions dropped by 3.9% in FY 2019 for a fifth straight year and by 12% from FY 2013 to FY -2019.
The long-term goal, announced in June 2019 in the long-term growth strategy under the Paris Agreement, is to become carbon neutral in 2050.
The outlook for the Russian Federation is not so good:
https://link.springer.com/article/10...25-019-00016-8
Russia is definitely a fossil fuel addict, and a large portion of their GDP depends on fossil fuel exports:Russia, ranking fourth in the world in primary energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, adheres to the strategy of “business as usual” and relies on fossil fuels. Decarbonization of the energy sector is not yet on the horizon: a skeptical attitude towards the problem of global climate change prevails among stakeholders. GDP energy intensity remains high, supported by relatively low energy prices and high cost of capital. The share of solar and wind energy in the energy balance is insignificant and is not expected to exceed 1% by 2040.
Climate change is not prominent phraseology in Russia:For Russia, as for many other resource-rich and energy-exporting countries, the energy transition creates new long-term challenges, questioning the sustainability of the entire economy, which is highly dependent on hydrocarbon export revenues. Since the beginning of the 2000s, Russia has managed to increase energy exports dramatically: from 2000 to 2005, exports grew by an unprecedented 56%, exceeding the total energy exports of the USSR, providing an incredible acceleration of the national economy and strengthening the country’s position on the international stage as an “energy superpower”.
According to estimates by the Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ERI RAS), with the transformation of the global markets and reduced call for Russian hydrocarbons, the contribution of oil and gas to Russian GDP will decline by approximately half, from 31% in 2015 to 13–17% by 2040 (depending on the scenario). Therefore, climate-related policies that target a reduction in GHG emissions from hydrocarbons can substantially affect the Russian economy.
Despite that, GHG emissions have decreased in Russia largely due to the increase of nuclear/hydro/and natural gas energy sources.[...]the climate agenda and the drive for decarbonization are not yet essential factors in the energy strategy of the Russian Federation. Indeed, the Paris Agreement is mentioned only once in the draft version of the “Russian Energy Strategy Up to 2035”, a key document defining the country’s strategic priorities in this critically important industry, which was submitted to the government by the Energy Ministry in 2015 but not approved until now[...]
[...]skepticism concerning the anthropogenic nature of climate change is prevalent among stakeholders, as senior representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences and many state officials publicly express their doubts regarding the very concept of anthropogenically driven climate change.
Use of renewables is only a very small part of Russia's energy consumption, and will seemingly remain so in the coming decades:
Outlook for the Russian Federation getting on board with climate change policies is not good mainly because of government views on the importance of carbon reduction:The Russian energy balance is strongly dominated by fossil fuels, with natural gas providing 53% of total primary energy demand, and coal and oil-based liquid fuels each accounting for 18%. Carbon-free sources of energy are represented primarily by large-scale hydro and nuclear power (which enjoy strong state support). The total share of renewables (including hydro, solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal) was just 3.2% of Russia’s primary energy consumption in 2015. By the end of 2015, total installed renewable power generation capacity was 53.5 GW, representing about 20% of Russia’s total installed power generation capacity (253 GW), with hydropower providing nearly all of this capacity (51.5 GW), followed by bioenergy (1.35 GW). The installed capacity for solar and onshore wind amounted to 460 MW and 111 MW, respectively, as of 2015. [that's MW not GW!]
Since then, annual renewable capacity additions rose from 57 MW in 2015 to 376 MW in 2018 (320 MW solar, 56 MW wind). What is more important is the significant decline in capital expenditures in renewables auctions during the past 2 years, by 35% for wind and 31% for solar, according to the Energy Ministry. This process was not smooth; some capacity auction rounds have struggled to attract bids for a number of reasons, just over 2 GW of renewable capacity was awarded in tenders between 2013 and 2016, while the 2017 auction resulted in a total of 2.2 GW of wind, solar, and small hydro awarded in a single round, and in 2018, 1.08 GW of capacity was allocated among 39 projects. In 2017, five waste-to-energy projects were also introduced to the capacity market scheme, with a total capacity of 335 MW. But in 2018, the tender for waste energy capacity failed because of the strict new requirements for bidders to provide performance guarantees.
Russia’s attitude towards the energy transition is quite controversial: trying to introduce in a traditional centralized manner some components of this trend. First, with regard to new technologies, the country is essentially refusing to accept the main driver of the trend—the decarbonization agenda. Existing strategic documents (primarily a draft version of the “Russian Energy Strategy Up to 2035”, which was submitted to the government by the Energy Ministry in 2015, but not approved until now) do not take the energy transition into account.
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