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by Reason077
2049 days ago
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> "Japan being poor in all resources" But are they really so resource poor? Japan lies on the Pacific ring of fire and Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc, giving it very significant geothermal energy potential. In fact, Japanese companies are leading suppliers of geothermal turbines globally! Yet they barely make use of their own domestic geothermal resources. If Iceland can power 25% of its grid with geothermal energy, and New Zealand 17%, why not Japan? And what about wind? Like the UK, Japan is an island nation with a huge wind resource, both on and off-shore. The UK has almost 10,000 installed wind turbines with a capacity of over 20 GW, supplying 24% of all UK grid demand. Japan, on the other hand, barely has any. Why? It seems like Japan is blinkered by hydrogen technology to the exclusion of all else! |
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Iceland never had an Onsen culture. Japan's easy geo spots are already all famous Onsen towns and tapped. Sure it happens, but geothermal cannot pull much weight.
As for wind: Japan is unique in being horrible for on shore wind with absurdly steep cliff of a shore line. The coast of Japan gets deep quick. While Europe gets to build their wind farms on bedrock Japan is only now experimenting with floating wind farms. Atleast that's what I've learned from talking with people involved with wind in Japan.
Thus Japan's renewable energy generation is going to be solar. As it happens I only a 300 panel solar power plant as an investment. For myself I want to see hydrogen become viable because it can serve to put a floor on electricity prices. Without a base demand nothing prevents my peak solar production getting sold for free. With a hydrogen economy, all else equa,l atleast I might get 1/4 of peek prices.
Let me phrase all this a different way: Japan hates oil. Oil is Japan's largest import. After 2011 Japan's trade balance went massively minus just because of extra energy imports. If Japan had an easy out, they would have taken it.
Which leads me to my original "resource poor" comment. Japan is the classic example of the inverse dutch-disease. Japan has nothing, so they only survive by building high value add industries. Anything less and the island starves.