We just cannot afford to stop

 December 11, 2014

COMMENTARY: Fukushima battling utilities' 'no more green energy' decision

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/column/AJ201412110019

By TOSHIHIDE UEDA/ Senior Staff Writer

FUKUSHIMA--Officials and entrepreneurs in Fukushima Prefecture remain undaunted by the decision of regional power utilities to suspend purchases of electricity generated with renewable energy sources.

During a meeting in Tokyo on Nov. 18, Fukushima prefectural government officials argued squarely against the rationale being made by the utilities.

“It’s like discussing a sentence to punish a case that has yet to take place,” said Shuzo Sasaki, director of the prefectural government’s energy division. “That could end up shutting out people who are steadily pursuing their renewable energy projects.”

He was speaking at an expert subcommittee of the Fukushima prefectural government's coordinating council for promoting the introduction of renewable energy sources.

Five regional utilities--Hokkaido Electric Power Co., Tohoku Electric Power Co., Shikoku Electric Power Co., Kyushu Electric Power Co. and Okinawa Electric Power Co.--announced in succession at the end of September that they were no longer signing new contracts to purchase electricity generated from renewable energy sources under the feed-in-tariff system.

They said the supply potential could far outstrip demand if the introduction of renewables were to proceed at the current pace.

The expert subcommittee, headed by Ryuichi Yokoyama, a professor of energy engineering with Waseda University, was assembling a recommendation calling on power companies to resume accepting more renewable energy sources since the end of October.

In the case of Tohoku Electric, the provider of electricity to Fukushima Prefecture, the output capacity of solar power plants in its service area, authorized by the industry ministry under the feed-in-tariff system, totaled 10.73 gigawatts as of the end of May.

That compares with a weekday demand of 9.7 gigawatts in May, when the use of electricity is at its lowest, apparently showing that supply would exceed demand if all the plants were to go online.

The figures are deceptive, however.

To start with, solar power cannot be generated at night, and its daytime output depends on the weather. The power supply would never exceed demand unless multiple chance developments come together, such as a long spell of fine weather over all seven prefectures served by Tohoku Electric--all of the Tohoku region along with Niigata Prefecture--and winds strong enough to keep wind turbines operating at capacity across all that area.

The prefectural government's expert subcommittee finalized the recommendation at the end of November to call on relevant central government ministries and agencies, as well as utilities, to take prompt response measures.

PLANTS AUTHORIZED ONLY ON PAPER

In a draft recommendation to the central government and utilities presented on Nov. 18, the subcommittee pointed to another reason why supply is unlikely to exceed demand.

“The national government and power utilities should eliminate ‘paper-only authorizations’ of power plants by disqualifying operators of stalled projects and create room for accommodating late starters,” part of the document read.

The purchase price for green energy under the feed-in-tariff system is determined at the time of authorization, and remains unchanged for 20 years in the case of a solar power plant with an output capacity of 10 kilowatts or more.

Paper-only authorizations, whereby an operator is granted the right to a project while the locked-in price for power remains high but does not know if it will ever start the project, are spreading throughout Fukushima Prefecture.

The output capacity of solar power plants authorized under the feed-in-tariff system in the prefecture totaled 4.41 gigawatts at the end of July, the largest of all 47 prefectures of Japan. But only 210 megawatts, or less than 5 percent of that figure, were up and running.

For example, no construction project is under way at any one of the 16 authorized large-scale solar power plants in the prefectural capital of Fukushima.

The 16 plants have an average output of 40 megawatts. Building plants of that dimension would require some 80 hectares of land, along with farmland conversion permits, forest development permits, environmental impact assessments and various other procedures.

“But no single application has been received by the prefectural government,” said Sasaki, director of the energy division. “The prefectural government is not aware of any single project.”

Things are no different with smaller plants. Nishigo, a village in the south of the prefecture, has more than 3,800 authorized plants under 50 kilowatts in output capacity, but only 23 of them are up and running.

In the meantime, no power plant has been authorized in the towns of Futaba and Okuma, which co-host Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the site of the 2011 nuclear disaster. That is presumably because all residents were evacuated from those towns and are not expected to return any time soon.

The Law on Special Measures for Fukushima Reconstruction and Revitalization says, “As one of the national policies concerning the reconstruction and revitalization of Fukushima following the nuclear disaster, the national government shall take the financial measures necessary for developing and introducing renewable energy, the financial measures necessary for diversifying energy sources, or other measures as necessary.”

But the door was shut to the two towns before they could ever start any efforts for reconstruction and revitalization.

UNRELENTING PURSUIT OF GREEN ENERGY

The utilities' “no more green energy” decision has failed to discourage entrepreneurs from seeking to produce electricity with renewable energy sources for local consumption.

A ceremony in Kitakata, Fukushima Prefecture, on Oct. 29 celebrated the completion of the Oguni solar power plant with an output capacity of 1 megawatt. It was the first megawatt-class solar power plant built by Aizu Denryoku, a company established last year to pursue local production of energy for local consumption.

The group affiliated with the electric power company, headed by President Yauemon Sato, plans to start generating solar power to a total output capacity of 2.54 megawatts by the end of this year.

Aizu Denryoku had planned to expand its operations further the next fiscal year. Tohoku Electric’s decision to suspend purchases of electricity generated with renewable energy sources has left most of the company’s projects in limbo, but the company knows it cannot afford to wait for Tohoku Electric’s response if it wants to proceed.

Aizu Denryoku continues requesting municipal governments and other parties to provide land plots or assistance in other ways so that the company can still expand its operations, be it only slightly, by building more small-scale power plants under 50 kilowatts in output capacity, which are not affected by Tohoku Electric's new policy.

I wrote in a previous commentary about moves by the Tonokuchiseki land improvement agency to initiate micro-hydropower generation along the Tonokuchiseki canal, which draws water from Lake Inawashiroko to the city of Aizu-Wakamatsu, both in Fukushima Prefecture.

“We just cannot afford to stop,” Tetsuyuki Sato, chief of the land improvement agency, told me when I visited him a second time. “We have decided to add another employee.”

Micro-hydropower plants are also being affected by the utilities' suspensions, but so few of them have been authorized. The industry ministry said it would map out incentives to promote new purchase agreements for micro-hydropower, along with geothermal power and other forms of renewables.

“We will just go on, unaffected, with our project,” said Ichiro Endo, president of the Tonokuchiseki micro-hydropower generation company and head of the geotechnical consulting department with Asano Taiseikiso Engineering Co., a Tokyo-based partner in the project. “We hope to begin selling electricity to Tohoku Electric in fiscal 2016.”