14 DAY TRIAL // In a blogpost published earlier today, Greenpeace congratulates Japan for recent developments in its energy sector, and argues that, all things considered, the country has done a wonderful job surviving without nuclear in the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdown in March 2011.
The organization says that, given the fact that the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report paints a fairly gloomy picture about the future, it can only come as good news that Japan has managed to more-or-less willingly green up its ways.
On its website, Greenpeace details that, following the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, when an earthquake and its subsequent tsunami caused one of the worst nuclear incidents in history – the other one is Chernobyl – Japan's fleet of nuclear reactors was almost entirely retired.
Hence, the country had to rely on clean energy sources, together with some natural gas, oil, and coal, to ensure that its power demands would be properly dealt with. Despite this increase in the use of said dirty energy sources, Japan's greenhouse gas emissions did not increase all that much.
On the contrary, Greenpeace says that, according to information at hand, carbon emissions between 2010 and 2012, i.e. a period that includes the time when all nuclear reactors were offline, the country's carbon emissions upped by about 8%.
To put things into perspective, it must be said that, in 2009 and 2010, the annual increase in carbon emissions documented in this part of the world was one of 7%. This means that, contrary to some claims, the use or the lack of nuclear power does not influence the country's emissions all that much.
“Yes, Japan has suffered a rise in carbon dioxide emissions but this has been very small and surprising considering Japan is getting by without 54 nuclear reactors, the third largest fleet of reactors in the world,” Greenpeace writes.
Furthermore, “So why is Japan's President Abe so adamant that he wants to restart Japan's idle nuclear reactors? The people of Japan are already proving themselves the most talented society on Earth at energy efficiency. On top of that, the future of renewable energy in the country is bright and exciting.”
Greenpeace goes on to argue that, according to recent reports, 48 of Japan's nuclear reactors could be safely restarted. Of these, only 14 might actually go online sometime in the near future, simply because quite a lot of people strongly oppose the reopening of the rest.
Hence, plans to revive Japan's nuclear industry should be dropped, and the country should instead focus on investing heavily in green energy sources such as wind and solar, the organization maintains.