14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this week, high officials in the province of Fukushima in northeast Japan announced that, should things go as planned, the region would soon have its energy demands met by renewables alone.
More precisely, the deadline for this very ambitious initiative is said to be the year 2040.
The province has gone public with the news that it wishes to switch to relying solely on renewables at a time when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is looking into the possibility of having the country once again depend on nuclear power to a considerable extent.
Tetsunari Iida, the director for Sustainable Energy Policies in Japan, says that these opposing views and plans for the future are due to the fact that, “The Japanese government is very much negative.”
“Local government like the Fukushima prefecture or the Tokyo metropolitan government are much more active, more progressive compared to the national government, which is occupied by the industry people,” Tetsunari Iida further explains, as cited by Eco Watch.
Information shared with the public says that the province of Fukushima aims to achieve its goal of being powered by renewables alone by the year 2040 by supporting community green energy initiatives.
Otherwise put, the region's over 2 million residents will be the ones in charge of seeing to it that Fukushima puts its dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power behind it.
Estimates say that, for the time being, about 22% of the energy that Fukushima requires on a yearly basis is provided by renewables.
This is partly thanks to the fact that, back in last year's November, a 2-MW offshore wind turbine became operational off its coast.
The province is also home to a 26-MW solar power station and, in the months to come, it plans to install two other 7-MW offshore wind turbines.
Needless to say, Fukushima's newly discovered love for green energy sources is very likely to have something to do with the nuclear meltdown that occurred in this region in 2011.
Besides, reports show that, in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, many people in Japan started thinking that this energy source should be phased out.
Thus, according to a recent survey, 23% of the people living in the country are convinced that nuclear power must be abandoned at once.
Another 53% also believe that this energy source has become obsolete, but say that it should be eliminated in several stages.