Sanyo Solar Ark is a solar power generation facility that offers activities to cultivate appreciation for solar power generation and houses a museum of solar energy, one of the more unusual museums in the world. Located in Gifu Prefecture, Japan. Photo: http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/soulhit/1706050.html
If the 20th century saw a nuclear renaissance, will the 21st century become the golden age for alternative sources of energy? Recent developments in Japan all point in this direction.
The enormous scale of the March 11 triple disaster — a powerful earthquake, a tsunami and a destroyed nuclear power plant — has forced Japan to reconsider plans to increase its future reliance on nuclear power.
According to the Nikkei business daily, the Japanese government is now considering a plan that would require solar panels to be installed on all new buildings and houses by 2030. If the plan is successful, Japan would become a country with the world’s first national solar array.
At the recent G8 Summit in France, after announcing Japan’s intention to continue operating the existing nuclear plants for now, Prime Minister Naoto Kan also unveiled the government’s bold new plans to step up efforts to push renewable energy and energy conservation.
Kan expressed hopes that the country’s new direction would spur jobs and investments in technology while keeping Japan on the forefront of technological innovation.
He believes that the country’s solar focus would pour more money into the industry, creating better efficiency and innovations that would drastically reduce costs of solar power generation. This would ultimately lead to a more widespread use of renewable energy.
Earthquakes and tsunamis will happen again, regardless of how high the walls are built around the power plants. All the money that will go for repairing the damage could indeed be better spent for investing into new technologies.
A recent report by Japan Center for Economic Research indicates the Fukushima crisis is expected to cost from 5,7 trillion yen to 20 trillion yen (about $250 billion) or higher over the next 10 years, and that’s without compensation for damage to agriculture and fishery industries and people who had to move out of the area — a damage that can’t even be measured by money.