Fukushima gives renewable energy a chance

After decades of not bothering to switch off the lights in unoccupied rooms in their Tokyo home, Masayoshi Sakurai and his children now meticulously make sure they do
My wife used to badger us to switch off the lights because she was worried about high electricity bills. Now all of us have begun saving energy, by reducing the use of air-conditioners, turning off the computer and so on,” explained the corporate employee.

Sakurai is part of a growing movement in Japan, led by a media campaign called setsuden (power saving in Japanese), that has begun to spread support for limiting electricity consumption.

“Public support is strong for setsuden mostly because they fear power blackouts of the type caused by the disastrous Fukushima nuclear accident,” says Kazuko Sato, of Soft Energy Project, a non-government organisation that lobbies for renewable energy expansion.

Sato told IPS that the energy saving mood sweeping the country is a new trend in Japan that gives an opportunity to push for clean energy over national policy that favours nuclear power.

She explained that the challenge facing green activists is to link the setsuden mood to banning nuclear energy.

“To push renewable and safe energy to the national forefront and reduce Japan’s reliance on nuclear energy, it is important to sustain the current public setsuden mood. I am worried that the public support could be temporary,” she said.