By Sophie Welsh
Climate change poses an existential threat to humanity and is the most significant global policy challenge of our time, impacting our economy, politics, and society in profound and unprecedented ways. In a panel which brought together the world’s two leading experts, Kelly Gallagher (The Fletcher School, Tufts University) and Miranda Schreurs (Technical University of Munich) examined China and Japan’s distinctive strategies and policies for climate change mitigation.
According to Gallagher, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has accepted climate change as a fundamental threat to China’s national interests. The CCP is most concerned about China’s freshwater supply and sea level rise. Climate change has also caused extreme flooding and heat events, posing challenges to China’s governance. Due to extreme heat in the summer of 2022, water evaporated in China’s lakes and rivers, which decreased its hydropower capacity by 50% and depleted its overall capacity to provide electricity.
However, the Chinese leadership also sees opportunities in climate mitigation. Technologies such as solar photovoltaics (PV) and gas turbines have enhanced its export-led development model. Prominent Chinese officials have stated that energy security has become the most important task for the government.
China’s climate mitigation and energy security policies are tied to its ongoing socioeconomic transitions. China has the largest number of coal miners in the world, who would need to find other jobs if its coal consumption were to decline significantly. The government also confronts a political challenge of reforming the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which employ millions of workers and tend to be in high carbon emissions sectors.
After the Trump administration withdrew from the Paris Agreement, China had every excuse to do the same. While China has stayed on, it is struggling to play a leadership role in international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). One reason is that China has continued to identify with G-77 (a coalition of developing countries). One crucial issue on the agenda is climate finance. President Xi Jinping has said China would stop funding overseas coal and it would step up clean energy abroad, but we have seen no evidence of this. In the long run, the least developed countries (LDCs) will likely demand more support for climate finance from China.
What about the differences between China and Japan? Gallagher pointed out that in contrast to Japan, China has enormous land area ideal for renewables, and also has a lot of domestic coal. These two differences explain much of the policy variations between China and Japan. For Japan, climate finance is an emerging opportunity. However, Japan has faced its own challenges meeting its Kyoto Protocol commitments, due in part to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disasters. Japan is in a process of figuring out how to fulfill its net zero commitment by 2050, which is important for playing a leadership role in international climate negotiations.
Miranda Schreurs argued that Japan has had a policy narrative that tied together its energy security, economic development, and foreign policy, starting with the first Oil Shock in 1973. That was the first time Japan started to explore renewable energy. Energy saving became an important part of Japan’s industrial policy, exemplified by the Top Runner Program that offered industries incentives to move upward in terms of energy efficiency performance. Japan became one of the world’s leading countries focused on energy saving and renewable energy, which also enhanced its global economic competitiveness.
In the 1990s, Japan became active in with international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC. Japan aligned itself with the European Union (EU), led the Kyoto Protocol process, and stayed in it even after the U.S. and Canada withdrew.
Prior to Fukushima, Japan’s electricity came from thermal-powered (60%), nuclear (32%), and hydropower (8%). In 2010, there were 54 operable nuclear power plants. After the Fukushima nuclear crisis, Japan’s politics of energy shifted, as all of Japan’s nuclear plants were shut down for security checks. Currently, nine plants have been approved for operation, and there will likely be more in the near future. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently announced plans to restart more idle nuclear power plants and invest in next-generation nuclear energy projects. Public opposition to nuclear power has been weakening, perhaps because of recent hot summers and the electricity crisis.
It is important to point out that Japan’s share of renewables in the electricity sector has now increased to 19%, though that figure is still much lower than countries such as Germany. On the other hand, Japan is one of the countries with significant solar photovoltaics (PV) capacity, having surpassed Germany (which had the world leader for many years). There has been a rapid expansion of mega solar parks, which has met public opposition.
With regards to Japan’s climate mitigation efforts, the Climate Action Tracker has given an overall rating of “insufficient” and its action on climate finance as “critically insufficient.” Japan has committed itself to the carbon neutral goal by the year 2050, which will be a major policy challenge in the coming years.