Decline of Feed in Tariff

Along with resuming effort for nuclear reactors, the syndicate of power generation company and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is moving forward to shutting

out small businesses for solar generation. METI released policy review of feed in tariff, which gave unlimited power on major power generation companies to restrict acceptance of renewable energy as their disposal. Having great technological potential, Japan is retreating from being green energy great power.

Current policy of feed in tariff was laid in 2012, a year after the tragic accident in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. It required power generation companies to buy all amount of renewable energy produced by private business entities. As a result of compromise with power companies, the government allowed them to add its cost for buying renewable energy on the price of electricity.

Ignoring that immorality of putting additional cost on utility price, bureaucrats attributed their failure in engineering feed in tariff system to price setting in buying. At the time the government introduced the system in July 2012, the price was ¥42 for 1 kilowatt per an hour. METI will reduce it to less than ¥20 next year. High price caused rushing into power generation business. Because there were too much electricity expected in power supply network, power companies temporarily stopped buying solar energy.

METI has clearly been reluctant to establish viable system for feed in tariff. If the price for renewable energy had been too high, they could adjust it. If solar power had been too much for supply network, they could make efforts to raise the capacity. What they actually did was everything for restricting renewable energy.

Current restriction for feed in tariff is limited to major solar and wind generation with 500 kilowatt or more. New regulation will be applied to all kinds of generation, including small size generation in every family. Restriction period will be extended from less than thirty years to limitless. Major power companies will be able to restrict renewable energy as much as they like.

The message from power companies and METI is obvious. “That is why we need nuclear power. Told ya!” Bureaucrats use time for controlling the people. METI has been waiting for bitter memories of nuclear accident going away from people’s mind. They believe those bitter memories will be contained within the people around Fukushima. To other people, bureaucrats stress the importance of “stable supply” of energy. Most people in Japan will forget the fact that nuclear energy supply had been done on sacrifice of someone.