The nuclear power industry received a left-handed compliment on Monday, as Japan announced that their CO2 emissions record for the year ending March 2014 was the worst in history.
In a Wall Street Journal article, it appears that Japan generated 1.223 billion metric tons of CO2 from March 2013 to March 2014, which was an enormous 16 percent job from 1990, which is used a base year for statistical purposes.
It is also a base data year for policy purposes. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1990 is the year set as a starting point for measuring efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, which contribute to global warming.
Japan's good intentions – a vow to increase the use of nuclear power to cut down on fuel-burning — went south with the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in northeastern Japan.
Japan had intended to increase the percentage of its electricity generated by nuclear power from 30 percent to 50 percent. Instead, they took all 48 of their nuclear power plants off line, which lead to a 24 percent increase in natural gas imports and a 4.8 percent increase in coal imports compared to the years when their nuclear power plants were operational.
Japan's rise in emissions is glaring in a time in which the United States and China are both pushing for progress, the Journal said. On the international scene, Japan is pushing for an approach in which the country would be given credit for reductions if other countries – in a regional alliance of 12 nations – were able to reduce their emissions levels by using Japanese technologies.
The United Nations has not yet approved of that approach.