Delay, Destruction, and Deception: The Greenwashing of the Japanese Government and Companies

Abstract

Green washing is prevalent in Japan as enacted by the Japanese Government, fossil fuel companies and utility companies. The Japanese government plans to spend more than 150 trillion yen (approximately 1 trillion U.S. dollar) as the total climate change related investment for the next ten years. However, the governmental plan is, alongside the big utility companies, to keep the existing energy system as long as possible because big utility companies’ main assets are still fossil fuel-fired power plants and nuclear power plants. So, combustion of ammonia/hydrogen with fossil fuel power plants and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) are supposed to play big roles in the governmental plan. Japan’s CO2 emission target for 2030 is not sufficient for the Paris Agreement target, and what’s more is that the current governmental climate policy is not even stringent enough to meet their insufficient target. However, the government claims that Japan’s target is consistent with the Paris Agreement and Japan is on track for achieving it. Automobile companies such as Toyota are lagging behind international competition’s work on electric vehicles, stating that there are various ways of achieving decarbonization to justify their backwardness. This situation will negatively impact the Japanese industries as a whole.