Monday June 1, 10:07 AM
PREVIEW-Japan to choose on climate: lose face or lose money
By Risa Maeda
TOKYO, June 1 (Reuters) - Japan's prime minister faces the country's toughest climate change challenge in more than a decade when he sets a greenhouse gas emissions goal for 2020 this month: he must either take a lead on the cuts or cave into pressure from business.
If his target is deemed too small, Taro Aso will earn global ire for not pulling his weight in the fight against climate change and disappoint some voters ahead of a looming election.
Japan, the world's fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter, is under huge pressure from developing nations to show leadership by opting for deep emissions reductions by 2020 to ensure a strong outcome for December's talks on a new global climate pact.
If Aso cuts too deeply, however, he will have to ask companies and consumers to pay a huge bill for spending on low carbon infrastructures just when the world's second biggest economy is struggling with its worst recession in decades.
Aso's government has been looking at six options to cut emissions, ranging from plus 4 percent to minus 25 percent from 1990 levels. Japanese emissions were on the rise recently, so the range is equivalent to minus 4 percent to minus 30 percent from 2005.
The opposition Democratic Party has said emissions cuts of 25 percent from 1990 were desirable and recent voter polls show Aso's Liberal Democratic Party trailing his opponents.
Aso, who must call an election by October and could do so sooner, has said he would finalise a 2020 target by mid-June, well before a July meeting of G8 leaders and December's U.N. climate gathering in the Danish capital Copenhagen.
'A weak target would surely embarrass him when he attends the G8 meeting,' said Mie Asaoka, head of Kiko Network, an environment group calling for Japan to back a 25 percent cut.
Developing nations such as India and China want rich nations to sign up to cuts of between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels to show their seriousness in the fight against climate change.
ENERGY EFFICIENT
Environment Minister Tetsuo Saito said last week that a mid-term target of minus 15 percent was possible.
A deeper cut of minus 25 percent is also achievable if emissions credits are bought abroad from clean energy projects in developing nations or countries with excess offsets. Japan has been a major buyer of such offsets under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol.
'(Saito's option) would be just about OK and be enough for a deal in Copenhagen that brings the U.S. and major developing countries on board,' said Mark Kenber, policy director for the Climate Group, which advises governments and business on how to move to a low-carbon future.
Later in the week, Aso said it would be difficult to ignore a burden from a cut of 25 percent.
Japan's biggest business lobby, Nippon Keidanren, points to the major energy efficiency drive industry has undertaken since the first oil shock hit the resource-poor country in the 1970s.
The lobby supports a plus 4 percent target, saying it is the most reasonable in terms of cost, compared with proposals from Europe and the United States.
'Even if Japan does its best, that would mean little as a whole,' Keidanren's chief Fujio Mitarai said.
Japan accounts for only 4 percent of global emissions, compared with 20 percent each for China and the United States, the world's top two greenhouse gas emitters.
But Aso seems unlikely to opt for a target far weaker than what Japan agreed in 1997 under the Kyoto pact signed in the country's ancient capital.
Japan agreed to cut emissions by 6 percent below 1990 levels during 2008-12, although the country has struggled to meet that goal, hurting its credibility in climate talks.
Japan's emissions hit a record high in the year to March 2008 as offices and households increased emissions and power companies failed to meet their pollution reduction goals
COMPARABLE ACTION
Climate talks at the end of the year in Copenhagen aim to seal a broader climate pact to replace Kyoto from 2013.
The European Union has promised to cut emissions 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels and by 30 percent if other rich nations follow suit.
U.S. President Barack Obama aims to cut emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020, while Australia last month ramped up its target to a cut of 25 percent below 2000 levels if other rich nations backed ambitious reductions.
'This is about comparability for a post-Kyoto agreement. If you look at the indicators Japan is in many ways very similar to the EU, in terms of incomes and emissions per-capita,' said Frank Jotzo, deputy director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute in Canberra.
A recent poll by the government found that the third-weakest option of minus 7 percent was the most popular with the public.
Some analysts said weaker options than minus 7 percent were not consistent with green policy incentives Tokyo announced recently, including increased sales targets for solar panels and low-emission cars.
Toshihiko Fukui, chairman of a panel of experts that drafted the six options, told Aso during a recent public meeting that initial costs to cut emissions would eventually turn into investments, an angle the six scenarios failed to address fully.
Some, though, were confident Japan would opt for a strong target. 'They're proud of the leadership they've shown ... I don't think they want to be seen as an international laggard,' Angela Anderson of the U.S. Climate Action Network said in a telephone briefing.
(For related FACTBOX, click on)
(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in Tokyo, David Fogarty in Singapore and Deborah Zabarenko in Washington; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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