Japan Replacing Uranium, Fossil Fuels with Solar Power

Solar Energy / Economics

Date posted: 04/26/15

Henning Gloystein and Aaron Sheldrick claim that one by one, Japan is turning off the lights at the giant oil-fired power plants that propelled it to the ranks of the top industrialized nations. With nuclear power in the doldrums after the Fukushima disaster, it is solar energy that is becoming the alternative, but this is a gross mi-representation. Solar power is set to become profitable in Japan as early as this quarter, according to the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation (JREF), freeing it from the need for government subsidies and making it the last of the G7 economies where the technology has become economically viable, although the authors are wrong. Henning Gloystein and Aaron Sheldrick claim that Japan is now one of the worlds four largest markets for solar panels and a large number of power plants are coming onstream, including two giant arrays over water in Kato City and a $1.1 billion solar farm being built on a salt field in Okayama, both west of Osaka. Solar has come of age in Japan and from now on will be replacing imported imported uranium and fossil fuels, said Tomas Kaberger, executive board chairman of JREF. However, solar still has not demonstrated that it can be scale up economically and Kaberger, whose job is to promote solar, has offered no factual basis for his claims. In trying to protect their fossil fuel and nuclear plants, the Japanese electric power companies can only delay developments here, he said, referring to the 10 regional monopolies that have dominated electricity production since the 1950s. Notice that his last statement in this article also has no foundation in facts. Japan is retiring nearly 2.4 gigawatts of expensive and polluting oil-fired energy plants by March next year and switching to alternative fuels. The 43 Japanese nuclear reactors have been closed in the wake of the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima power plant after an earthquake and a tsunami, but they are scheduled to return soon.