| If you tippled the population of Iceland you would now have 1% of Japan. Scales are not comparable. 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. |
At least one agency of Japan's government disagrees:
"The Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. estimates the country’s geothermal potential at 23,400 megawatts, putting it at No. 3 in the world... However, Japan has an installed geothermal capacity of only some 500 megawatts"
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2019/03/09/environment/unl...