TIMETakes on Renewable Energy in Japan, Shows How Mainstream Media Fails Us

From TIME, December 22, by Coco Masters, A Japanese Town That Kicked the Oil Habit:

In resource-poor Japan, which imports 90% of its fuel, Kuzumaki is a marvel of energy self-sufficiency. Signs of the town's comprehensive focus on environmental sustainability are visible from its mountaintops to the pens of the dairy cows that once were the bedrock of local commerce. Atop Mt. Kamisodegawa, the 12 wind turbines, each 305 feet (93 m) tall, have the capacity to convert mountain gusts into 21,000 KW of electricity — more than enough to meet the needs of the town's residents. The excess is sold to neighboring communities.

Of course, the wind doesn't always blow. At Kuzumaki Highland Farm, 200 dairy cows share the power load. Their manure is processed into fertilizer and methane gas, the latter used as fuel for an electrical generator at the town's biomass facility. Nearby, a three-year project sponsored by Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's New Energy Development Organization (NEDO) uses wood chips from larch trees to create gas that powers the farm's milk and cheese operations. The bark of other trees is also made into pellets for heating stoves used throughout the community. A local winery, for instance, has two such stoves, and Kuzumaki pays residents up to 50,000 yen ($490) toward the cost of installing one. All told, clean energy generated 161% of Kuzumaki's electricity last year.

Wait, so is “gas that powers the farm's milk and cheese operations” being used to generate electricity? The “heating stoves” that burn tree-bark pellets? Masters thinks so, or doesn’t know how to write. Further on in the article, Masters is pessimistic about wind, sun, and bio because “[i]nvestment in the town's projects — paid for by local tax revenues, private investors and the prefectural and central governments — totals $50 million. That's about $6,000 per resident, an amount that would pay the electricity bill for an average Tokyo family of four for more than seven years.” If this really meant that a family of four can recoup its investment in seven-eight years, it would make all the sense in the world to invest in these energy sources at once. Besides, that $50 million investment is producing 161% of Kumazaki’s electricity requirements, which provides for 14,500 people, not just the 9,000 Kumazaki residents? And wouldn’t that make the investment more like $3,450, which should be recoverable in four-five years?

Of course it doesn’t work like that, since there are such things as running costs. In fact, these numbers only make sense within a broader range of data that Masters appears to be totally ignorant of. This is symptomatic of the entire article, where Masters belches forth a scattershot array of disconnected factoids that fail to make a meaningful connection to our energy future.

The entire article is nothing more than preconceptions and anecdotes loosely strung together. And that’s par course for the course where mainstream reporting on Japan is concerned. At this rate, all we’ll be left with will be the wire services.

ADD (December 24): In fact, what I thought was Masters’ greatest error appears to be… but let me explain. Note that the $6,000 investment is per resident while the “average Tokyo household” that the it is debited to has four members. So I was off by a factor of four? Stupid me? Not so fast. The $50 million total investment most likely includes non-electricity items (heating stoves?), and the average (2005) has only 2.94 members. So wouldn’t all that make the investment recoverable in twelve-fifteen years, not a great bargain, but not that unreasonable as a long-term investment, particularly given the prospects for energy prices. It all depends on maintenance and other running costs and the life expectancy of the fixed investments. We also don’t know what the economies of scale will look like if these projects could be replicated on an industrial scale or alternatively mass produced. But such speculation only brings up the next question: Why haven’t the authorities been able to give this all an effective nudge by judiciously applied subsidies?

Going through these questions one by one, fact-checking, consulting experts, etc., is what we expect professional journalists to do. Failing to do so sends this article to the limbo where reports that aren’t even wrong are condemned.