here is a shared recognition among global leaders that decarbonization efforts must be accelerated. This was highlighted by Yasutoshi Nishimura, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan ahead of the G7 Summit underway now in Hiroshima, Japan.
The world is seeking deep reductions in emissions, with many countries, cities, and businesses pledging to achieve net zero. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change has long-term goals of 2°C and 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, with global net-zero emissions to be achieved in the second half of this century. Last March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicated in its Synthesis Report that net zero needs to be achieved by around 2050 if we are to limit global temperature rises to 1.5°C.
There are different pathways to achieve net zero carbon emissions (carbon neutrality), and each country faces its own set of challenges to achieving this goal.
Let’s look at the case of Japan, where an important role will be played by negative emissions—removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Approaches for this include bioenergy carbon capture and storage, biochar and direct air carbon capture and storage. Biochar is a carbon-rich material produced by heating biomass in an oxygen-limited environment that can store carbon for decades or more. Bioenergy carbon capture and storage is a technology used to capture and permanently store CO2 emissions during the process of biomass conversion into energy. Direct air refers to the process of capturing CO2 from the air and storing it permanently. At the scale needed, such bioenergy deployments will require large areas of land and may come with significant impacts on society (such as increased food prices) and the environment, including land and water.
Renewable energy, nuclear power, and fossil fuels with carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) are all required to replace conventional fossil fuels. But carbon dioxide removal technologies can also help by offsetting emissions from hard-to-abate industries that use fossil fuels without CCUS. There are also opportunities for secondary energy imports from overseas—imports of hydrogen and hydrogen-based energy sources as well as electricity and biomass. As Japan lacks international power grid connections, it must place a higher priority than other countries on hydrogen and hydrogen-based energy storage.
As we pursue carbon neutrality, the deployment of each approach will be largely determined by economic factors, based on the outlook for future improvements in technologies and their relative competitiveness. For many kinds of CCUS technologies this depends on the production cost of hydrogen, which itself is determined by the cost of renewable power. These are complex systems.
Energy use is also critical. Carbon-free electrification will make it relatively easy to achieve net zero emissions in the electricity sector compared to other secondary energy sources. Energy storage based on hydrogen, such as ammonia, synthetic methane, and synthetic liquid fuels, and renewables will also play an important role. The residue emissions from fossil fuel combustion or other non-CO2 greenhouse gasses will be limited and will be offset by carbon dioxide removal.
CCUS technologies include synthetic liquid and gas fuels, mineralization of cement, and substitutions of synthetic chemical products. In future, once net zero is achieved, fossil fuel consumption will be replaced with carbon-free or nearly carbon-free electricity, or renewables-based hydrogen. Hence, we need to consider existing infrastructure and appliances that use fossil fuels, and some of them present challenges. For example, in Hiroshima, a biomass power plant has been equipped with carbon capture facility. More carbon capture technologies are also being applied in cement and steel industries.
Thus, for Japan, the routes to achieving net zero are complex. The country needs to carefully manage the interdependent links between energy supply (e.g., renewables) and innovation to reduce demand for energy (such as shared mobility, shared working spaces, the sharing economy), and carbon dioxide removal. For example, direct air carbon capture and storage requires considerable energy, which has a high impact on costs, whether it relies on renewable sources or natural gas. Technology diffusion by producing granular technology might reduce the cost, along with financial support from public and private investment to scale it up.
There have been studies of pathways to achieving net zero, but more analysis is needed to address the entire energy system. Since there are no silver bullet technologies to solve these energy issues, current energy systems in Japan will ineluctably take different pathways towards decarbonization. At a later stage policy may converge on the most promising or successful among these pathways. The world is waiting for Japan and other G7 countries to lead by example in taking ambitious action to achieve net zero emissions within the first half of this century.
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Japan and the Path to Net Zero
G7 Hiroshima Summit 2023. Photo via Adobe Stock.
May 21, 2023
There is a shared recognition among global leaders that decarbonization efforts must be accelerated. This was highlighted by Yasutoshi Nishimura, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan ahead of the G7 Summit underway now in Hiroshima, Japan.
T
here is a shared recognition among global leaders that decarbonization efforts must be accelerated. This was highlighted by Yasutoshi Nishimura, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan ahead of the G7 Summit underway now in Hiroshima, Japan.
The world is seeking deep reductions in emissions, with many countries, cities, and businesses pledging to achieve net zero. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change has long-term goals of 2°C and 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, with global net-zero emissions to be achieved in the second half of this century. Last March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicated in its Synthesis Report that net zero needs to be achieved by around 2050 if we are to limit global temperature rises to 1.5°C.
There are different pathways to achieve net zero carbon emissions (carbon neutrality), and each country faces its own set of challenges to achieving this goal.
Let’s look at the case of Japan, where an important role will be played by negative emissions—removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Approaches for this include bioenergy carbon capture and storage, biochar and direct air carbon capture and storage. Biochar is a carbon-rich material produced by heating biomass in an oxygen-limited environment that can store carbon for decades or more. Bioenergy carbon capture and storage is a technology used to capture and permanently store CO2 emissions during the process of biomass conversion into energy. Direct air refers to the process of capturing CO2 from the air and storing it permanently. At the scale needed, such bioenergy deployments will require large areas of land and may come with significant impacts on society (such as increased food prices) and the environment, including land and water.
Renewable energy, nuclear power, and fossil fuels with carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) are all required to replace conventional fossil fuels. But carbon dioxide removal technologies can also help by offsetting emissions from hard-to-abate industries that use fossil fuels without CCUS. There are also opportunities for secondary energy imports from overseas—imports of hydrogen and hydrogen-based energy sources as well as electricity and biomass. As Japan lacks international power grid connections, it must place a higher priority than other countries on hydrogen and hydrogen-based energy storage.
As we pursue carbon neutrality, the deployment of each approach will be largely determined by economic factors, based on the outlook for future improvements in technologies and their relative competitiveness. For many kinds of CCUS technologies this depends on the production cost of hydrogen, which itself is determined by the cost of renewable power. These are complex systems.
Energy use is also critical. Carbon-free electrification will make it relatively easy to achieve net zero emissions in the electricity sector compared to other secondary energy sources. Energy storage based on hydrogen, such as ammonia, synthetic methane, and synthetic liquid fuels, and renewables will also play an important role. The residue emissions from fossil fuel combustion or other non-CO2 greenhouse gasses will be limited and will be offset by carbon dioxide removal.
CCUS technologies include synthetic liquid and gas fuels, mineralization of cement, and substitutions of synthetic chemical products. In future, once net zero is achieved, fossil fuel consumption will be replaced with carbon-free or nearly carbon-free electricity, or renewables-based hydrogen. Hence, we need to consider existing infrastructure and appliances that use fossil fuels, and some of them present challenges. For example, in Hiroshima, a biomass power plant has been equipped with carbon capture facility. More carbon capture technologies are also being applied in cement and steel industries.
Thus, for Japan, the routes to achieving net zero are complex. The country needs to carefully manage the interdependent links between energy supply (e.g., renewables) and innovation to reduce demand for energy (such as shared mobility, shared working spaces, the sharing economy), and carbon dioxide removal. For example, direct air carbon capture and storage requires considerable energy, which has a high impact on costs, whether it relies on renewable sources or natural gas. Technology diffusion by producing granular technology might reduce the cost, along with financial support from public and private investment to scale it up.
There have been studies of pathways to achieving net zero, but more analysis is needed to address the entire energy system. Since there are no silver bullet technologies to solve these energy issues, current energy systems in Japan will ineluctably take different pathways towards decarbonization. At a later stage policy may converge on the most promising or successful among these pathways. The world is waiting for Japan and other G7 countries to lead by example in taking ambitious action to achieve net zero emissions within the first half of this century.
