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Japanese Town Switches Off Heating to Save Energy

Posted on: Friday, 17 February 2006, 21:00 CST

TOKYO: When the Japanese Government issued a national battle cry against soaring global energy prices this winter, no one heeded the call more than Kamiita, a farming town in the misty mountains of western Japan.

To save energy, officials shut off the heating system in the town hall, leaving themselves and 100 workers no respite from near- freezing temperatures.

On a recent frosty morning, rows of desks were full of employees bundled in coats and blankets, nursing flasks of hot tea. To cut petrol use, officials say, most of the town's 13,000 citizens are strictly obeying a nationwide call to turn off car engines while idling, particularly at traffic lights.

Japan, the world's second-largest economy, has no domestic sources of fossil fuel and, facing rising oil prices, has turned energy efficiency into an art form.

Japan's oil consumption has remained steady since 1975, while world consumption has risen steadily. It has dramatically diversified its power sources over the years, becoming far less dependent on oil and cultivating a culture of conservation.

Kamiita's decision to turn off the heat, which garnered national media attention, came after a nationwide "warm biz" campaign led thousands of businesses and government offices to set their thermostats no higher than 20 C this winter while encouraging employees to wear warm clothes at work.

If it sounds like a gimmick, consider the figures from the "cool biz" campaign launched by the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, last summer.

Companies including Toyota, Hitachi, Isuzu and Sharp asked everyone, from the chief executive down, to strip off their much- loved ties and jackets as office air conditioners were set no cooler than 28 C.

In metropolitan Tokyo alone, the campaign saved 70 million kilowatts of power between June and August - enough to power a city of a quarter of a million people for one month, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company.

Vehicles with low emissions account for almost 11million, or 21 per cent, of cars on Japan's roads. Across greater Tokyo, the world's largest metropolis, "intelligent machines," from subway ticket machines to building escalators, automatically switch off when not in use.

The government has set strict new energy-saving targets for 18 types of consumer and business electronics.

Home and office air conditioners, for instance, must be redesigned to use 63 per cent less power by 2008. The targets have sparked a gold rush among electronics makers, who are churning out record numbers of energy-saving but more expensive consumer products.

Canon's US$225 Pixus MP500 printer, which uses 60 per cent less electricity than the company's other models, has become the number- one seller in Japan despite cheaper options on the market.

Matsushita, maker of the Panasonic and National brands, is selling a US$600 energy-efficient ceiling lamp that tells users "You are saving 10 per cent on electricity" each time it is switched on.

Last year, the company entered the housing business and is now building suburban "eco-homes" equipped with energy-saving gadgets and solar panels that can cut the average power bill of about US$183 a month by 65 per cent.

Conservation a personal responsibility

It can take years for savings on energy bills to offset initial investment in some products. Thus, experts say, Japan's boom is not likely to spread abroad until product prices come down.

But with opinion polls showing that more than three-quarters of Japanese people view energy conservation as a personal responsibility, many are willing to pay.

That has helped make Japan's energy consumption per person almost half that of the United States.

Conservation fever swept the nation after the Kyoto protocol, the 1997 treaty written in Japan that aims to reduce greenhouse gases.

But experts say Japan's transformation dates from before Kyoto and is rooted more in economics than environmentalism.

After the 1970s oil crisis, Japan "went into a panic. We have no oil of our own, and are completely dependent on imports," said Takako Nakamura, an official at the global environment bureau of the environment ministry. "That weakness changed the way we looked at energy."

The country embarked on a major effort to wean itself off oil. Japan imports 16 per cent less oil than it did in 1973, although the economy has more than doubled.

Billions of dollars were invested in converting oil-reliant electricity-generation systems into those powered by natural gas, coal, nuclear energy or alternative fuels. For instance, Japan now accounts for 48 per cent of the world's solar power generation.

At the same time, Japanese industries have dramatically reduced oil consumption. Nippon Steel, the country's largest steelmaker, has cut its dependency on oil by 85 per cent since 1974; oil now accounts for 10 per cent of the fuel used to heat its factory furnaces.

Oil was replaced in part by coal, a cheaper and more abundant fossil fuel. Even so, critics say reliance on coal or natural gas remains a temporary solution, particularly as prices have risen along with those for oil.

Source: China Daily; North American ed.

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