The outcome of the leadership race of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan will determine the next prime minister. Failing an electoral defeat of the LDP, which has been in power for most of post-war history, this will also determine the direction of Japan’s future energy policy. Japan is currently trailing far behind most of Europe, the US and China in replacing fossil fuels for electricity production.

According to the Japan Times they face these two choices:

The first is to continue with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s plan to increase the use of nuclear power alongside that of renewable energy.

The second is to reduce nuclear power’s share while moving more toward renewable and ammonia- and hydrogen-generated electricity.

This is a uniquely Japanese framing of the options because if you look around, no other major country is even talking about ammonia-generated electricity. Hydrogen plays mostly a peripheral role in their discussions. That is because these two substances are not really energy sources but energy carriers (just like a charged battery). To produce them you have to use some other form of energy, such as by steam-reforming fossil gas or coal or by hydrolysis of water using wind or solar electricity.

If you use fossil fuel to make hydrogen (or ammonia, its more easily shippable cousin), that does not solve the problem you are trying to address in the first place, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel. If you use renewable electricity to make hydrogen, ship it for thousands of km and then turn it back into electricity, a large part of the green energy will be lost in conversion inefficiencies.

Where do the candidates stand on the issues? Japan Times explains:

Of the nine LDP leadership candidates, three — Takayuki Kobayashi, Taro Kono, and Shigeru Ishiba — have been particularly vocal with their views.

Kobayashi, a former economic security minister, is strongly advocating a new strategy that emphasizes nuclear’s role in meeting future demand.

“The current energy plan is too biased toward renewable energy. We should work toward restarting, replacing and building new nuclear power plants that have been confirmed as safe,” he said during a Sept. 14 debate at the Japan National Press Club.

Former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, however, favors a future that brings the share of nuclear power close to zero. But he also has a preference for two forms of renewable energy in particular because they are ideal for Japan given its geography.

“Japan has the world’s third-largest potential for geothermal energy. We should also maximize the potential for small-scale hydroelectric power generation,” Ishiba, a former LDP secretary-general, said during the same Sept. 14 debate.

They do not explain where Kono stands, but it was previously reported that he had softened his anti-nuclear stance and now wants to restart more of the reactors shuttered after the Fukushima disaster.

None of the above candidates seem to really have a realistic solution.

Restarting nuclear power stations that have been upgraded to higher safety standards post-Fukushima, may be the low hanging fruit of carbon-free energy generation, but we are only talking about at best adding maybe 10% of total power demand through restarted reactors.

Construction of new reactors could take over a decade, even if sites without seismic risks and with local support could be found quickly, which is far from certain. Recent reactor projects in Europe and the US have been a sobering experience. Olkiluoto 3 in Finland took 17 years from start of construction to electricity production, with costs ballooning from 3 billion € to 11 billion €. Construction of Flamanville 3 in France started in 2007. It went into commercial operation this month, 17 years later. Cost estimates increased from an initial 3.3 billion € to 13.2 billion € two years ago. Hinkley Point C construction started in 2017, with an operational date estimate of 2029-2031 and cost overruns almost killed the project.

If we want to cut out a significant amount of CO2 by 2030, as would be required to have any chance of meeting the Paris climate goals to avoid the worst of the climate disaster, new nuclear reactors aren’t going to cut it, simply because they’re unlikely to have much of an impact before about 2040 and even then they will be very expensive.

So what should the LDP candidates propose, what should Japan do? Japan has a long coastline that can be harnessed for onshore and offshore wind. Solar is one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation available now, cheaper than coal, if the variability of output can be addressed through storage or over-building of supply. The costs of wind and solar power have been falling dramatically for several decades. The cost of battery storage has decreased significantly over the past decade. It’s not rocket science and other countries have already been doing it at a large scale.

Germany, with a much shorter coast line and a more northerly latitude (the latitude of Tokyo is comparable to Gibraltar and Germany’s southern border is further north than Hokkaido) produces the majority of its electricity from renewables, as does Denmark.

Ishiba is not wrong in encouraging geothermal power, which can steadily produce electricity 24 hours a day all year round, or small scale hydro, but it’s neither the cheapest nor the easiest to build energy source.

In terms of cost effectiveness, solar and wind are really without competition. What holds back their use in Japan is a grid that is under-dimensioned for moving large amounts of power around the country because it was designed for a system where generation and consumption are relatively close by, under control of the same regional power company.

This will be different with renewables, where generation could take place more than 1000 km away from consumption and output could shift around the country depending on seasons and weather conditions. Thus what Japan needs is many more high voltage direct current (HVDC) lines that can move a large amount of power over long distances, something that China has invested in heavily in the last two decades. On top of that the permit process has to be streamlined.

All this talk about hydrogen and ammonia has been a huge distraction, perhaps by design. Currently these energy carriers are connected to existing fossil fuel companies. Importing hydrogen (or ammonia made from hydrogen), though quite expensive, would benefit shipbuilding giants and trading companies now handling coal, oil and LNG imports. It’s not really about stopping the climate disaster but about keeping some very large corporates in business.

When will Japan get a prime minister who understands these issues and is bold enough to address them?