Paying the price for leading the way
Chris Hogg, BBC News 11 Dec 07;
"It's all very well developing more efficient cars," says Junichi Sato from Greenpeace."But telling people not to drive is a lot harder."
On the flat roof of a department store in Tokyo's fashionable shopping district Ginza there is a wide patch of grass and some flower beds. It is about the size of a small suburban garden. The soil is just a few centimetres thick. It has been developed specially for this purpose - even a thin layer can support plants and grasses.
The rooftop garden also helps to conserve energy. In the summer when the temperature on the exposed concrete of the roof hovers between 60 and 70 degrees, underneath the soil it is just 30 degrees.
"The soil is very light," says Kenji Masaki, the contractor who supplies it. "You only need to water it once a week, and we don't use chemical fertilisers either."
Japan is often described as the most energy efficient country in the world. After the "oil shocks" of the 1970s the government decided it had to reduce its reliance on fuel and energy from elsewhere.
Taking the lead
Today, the government says it has reduced energy consumption by 37% in three decades.
The Japanese have achieved this through innovation - coming up with ideas like "green roofs" to cool buildings and developing new products like Mr Masaki's super light soil to turn the theory into a reality.
Often ideas for advanced technologies receive significant government support, funded by the tax payer to help commercialise products that otherwise might not make it.
For example Japan, is testing fuel-cell vehicles in Tokyo that run on hydrogen.
There are only a few dozen of the vehicles on the road, but the government has spent $30 million to build 12 refilling stations around the city where the vehicles can be filled up.
The collaboration between the government and the two car companies involved, Toyota and Honda, means that the prototype vehicles can be tested under "real-world" conditions.
The government also encourages innovation in other ways. It's "Top Runner" labelling scheme allows consumers to choose the most energy efficient electronic consumer goods with ease.
On a regular basis, officials examine goods such as refrigerators and ascertain which is the most efficient model on the market. That is then set as the standard for energy efficiency.
Products that have the same efficiency level are labelled with a green sticker. Products that don't have an orange sticker.
The government says that these labels influence consumer behaviour, thereby providing companies with an incentive to improve the efficiency of their products.
But Japan's impressive record of energy efficiency isn't just the result of advanced technology.
There is also a sense of what you might call "frugality" that permeates through Japanese corporate and family life.
In summer corporations and municipalities often restrict the use of air-conditioning and encourage workers to take off their ties and adopt cooler (less warm) fashions.
When you visit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the summer months, you find bureaucrats sweating in the corridors.
In the winter on the coldest days, they are just as likely to be shivering at their desks.
Less is more
At home too, there are differences between the average Japanese house and those found in the US or the UK.
Japanese homes are smaller overall. But smaller rooms are easier to heat, and there is rarely any central heating.
Rooms are warmed one-by-one by heaters attached to the wall. Stairwells and toilets are left without heat (although the toilet seats are often warmed for you).
In my house, when you flush the toilet the water to refill it comes out of a nozzle above the cistern. You can wash your hands in the water as it fills it up, reducing the amount of water used.
Warm water from baths is often piped into the washing machine to wash clothes.
Rubbish is recycled, religiously, at home and in industry.
But the Japanese still have a problem.
Under the Kyoto protocol Japan pledged to reduce its emissions by 6% from 1990 levels by 2012. Currently they are 8% above 1990 levels.
Some argue that the difficulty arises because Japan by 1990, in comparison to other countries, had created an industrial sector that was already extremely efficient.
Tall task
Trying to reduce emissions still further has proved difficult.
"It's like trying to squeeze water out of a damp cloth," one economist once told me. "The more you wring it out, the harder it gets to produce any moisture."
So the government is looking beyond industry, at offices where a recent report predicted that emissions are likely to rise as much as 30% by 2012 and in homes, where they will rise, probably by as much as 15%.
Over the last few decades, as Japanese industry became more efficient, the country got richer.
Living standards increased. People started to demand bigger houses. They bought more appliances, more PC's, TV's, luxury items. They started driving bigger cars and driving them further than they used to, in some cases driving instead of making journeys on foot.
They built more impressive offices too. And businesses started to open longer, in more locations, meeting the demand for greater convenience. These are all helping to increase the thirst for power.
The government has encouraged people to modify their behaviour with campaign slogans like "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" and the "Top Runner" scheme, which rewards innovation rather than penalising inefficiency.
Environmental campaigners might like to see tougher penalties to try to alter the behaviour of Japanese consumers but culturally that is quite difficult.
"It's all very well developing more efficient cars," says Junichi Sato from Greenpeace.
"But telling people not to drive is a lot harder. However that is the reality. We need to find a way for there to be fewer cars on the road."
Japan is currently considering detailed proposals to try to reduce its emissions but it seems likely that it will try to achieve its target by "carbon trading", which involves buying emission credits from other nations who have achieved greater reductions than they need to meet the Kyoto targets.
"These numbers are quite tough so we need to have a real sense of urgency," trade ministry officials have admitted.
But as elsewhere in the world many firms in Japanese feel they have done enough, or do not know what more they could do, so they have lobbied hard against changes that could affect their profit margins.
And consumers, while happy to do their bit, show no appetite for new taxes or restrictions on the products, the cars, the power they use.
