Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan: The Energy Future (Softbank CEO)

[bananas]

"This article by Softbank CEO Son Masayoshi outlines the thinking of one of Japan's most innovative capitalists and public-spirited citizens."

http://japanfocus.org/-Andrew-DeWit/3603

Creating a Solar Belt in East Japan: The Energy Future
Son Masayoshi with an introduction by Andrew DeWit

Introduction

This article by Softbank CEO Son Masayoshi outlines the thinking of one of Japan's most innovative capitalists and public-spirited citizens. Having helped create a competitive market in telecommunications, Son is now aimed at liberating and greening Japan's YEN 16 trillion electricity industry. In addition to the efforts he outlines in the article, Son inaugurated his Japan Renewable Energy Foundation on September 12. This Foundation is to be led by Tomas Kaberger, the former Director General of the Swedish Energy Agency. It includes a stellar cast of international experts on renewable energy, associated support policies (especially the feed in tariff), and other aspects of the ongoing energy revolution. Through these initiatives and the plan for a "solar belt," described in this article, Son has been instrumental in defining a new direction for Japan in the wake of Fukushima. Without Son putting renewable energy so squarely and credibly on the public agenda, Japan might have succumbed to the enormous pressure from Keidanren, METI, TEPCO and other elements of the nuclear village to maintain the unsustainable status quo.

In fact, the fight over Japan's energy options is not at all ended. The nuclear village's effort to portray Fukushima as merely a setback has failed in the face of the facts, of course. Among recent surveys results, we find those that indicate as much as 100,000,000 m³ of Fukushima's topsoil has been irradiated by the meltdowns, an enormous quantity whose disposal, both its logistics and its cost, simply staggers the mind. In the meantime, the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry (METI) is in a struggle with the financial institutions that lent trillions of yen to TEPCO and now want the state to ensure that they are completely reimbursed. The nuclear village and its hired guns in the academic and administrative and political sectors have worked together to craft a mechanism through which compensation will almost inevitably be torn out of the public budget as well as the pockets of utility ratepayers. The ricketiness of the scheme suggests it can only hold together if the 10 regional monopolized utilities and their risky nuclear assets are maintained largely as is. It is thus easy to understand why the establishment is furious at Son's effort to apply "creative destruction" to their vested interests in Japan's power markets.

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Wikipedia entry on Softbank:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank

SoftBank Corp. (ソフトバンク株式会社 Sofutobanku Kabushiki-gaisha?) is a Japanese telecommunications and media corporation, with operations in broadband, fixed-line telecommunications, e-Commerce, Internet, broadmedia, technology services, finance, media and marketing, and other businesses.

SoftBank was established in Tokyo, Japan on September 3, 1981, and had a market capitalization of approximately US$32.8 billion at 28 February 2006.

SoftBank's corporate profile includes various other companies such as Japanese broadband company Cable & Wireless IDC, cable company BB-Serve, and gaming company GungHo Online Entertainment. Additionally, it has various partnerships in Japanese subsidiaries of foreign companies such as Yahoo!, E-Trade, Ustream.tv and Morningstar. SBI Group is a Japanese financial services company that began in 1999 as a branch of SoftBank.<1>

SoftBank is currently the only official carrier of the iPhone for Japan.<2>

<snip>

[kristopher]

1. Son is turning out to be a major mover for renewables in Japan...

Head of green energy group eager to make impact in Japan

...The former director-general of the Swedish Energy Agency assumed the top post at the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation this summer after being persuaded at a dinner in June by a friend associated with the foundation to take the position.

Softbank Corp. CEO Masayoshi Son invested 1 billion yen ($13 million) to set up the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation, an organization that will promote alternative renewable energy resources such as solar power and wind power.

"I want you to take the job so that nuclear power plant accidents will never happen again in Japan," Son told Kaberger in a phone call in July.

Kaberger still had more than two years to go in his tenure at the Swedish Energy Agency, but he resigned in August because, given the current climate in Japan, he felt he could make a big difference.

Since he was boy...

http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201109130402.html

BTW, Kaberger majored in nuclear engineering.

[kristopher]

2. "In fact, the fight over Japan's energy options is not at all ended."

The political fight isn't over, anyway. I think Noda is trying to play both sides of the fence on the issue. He has put in place some right-minded people in the right places to make bureaucratic change happen, but I get the feeling that he is under the thumb of the utilities.