SINGAPORE / TOKYO -
One by one Japan is
turning off the lights at the giant oil-fired power plants that propelled it to
the ranks of the world's top industrialized nations.
With nuclear power in the doldrums after the Fukushima
disaster, it's solar energy that is becoming the alternative.
Solar power is set to become profitable
in Japan as early as this quarter, according to the Japan
Renewable Energy Foundation (JREF), freeing it from the need for
government subsidies and making it the last of the G7 economies where the
technology has become economically viable.
Japan is now one of the world's four largest markets
for solar panels and a large number of power plants are coming onstream,
including two giant arrays over water in Kato City and a $1.1 billion solar
farm being built on a salt field in Okayama, both west of Osaka.
"Solar has come of age in Japan and from now
on will be replacing imported uranium and fossil fuels," said Tomas
Kåberger, executive board chairman of JREF.REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino A
Greenpeace activist holds a solar panel wrapped as a gift to Brazil's President
Dilma Rousseff during a protest in front of the Planalto Palace in Brasilia
April 23, 2015.
"In trying to protect their fossil fuel and nuclear
(plants), Japan's electric power companies can only delay developments
here," he said, referring to the 10 regional monopolies that have
dominated electricity production since the 1950s.
Japan is retiring nearly 2.4 giga watts of expensive and
polluting oil-fired energy plants by March next year and switching to
alternative fuels. Japan's 43 nuclear reactors have been closed in the
wake of the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima power plant after an earthquake and
a tsunami - since then, renewable energy capacity has tripled to 25 gigawatts,
with solar accounting for more than 80 percent of that.
Once Japan reaches cost-revenue parity in solar
energy, it will mean the technology is commercially viable in all G7 countries
and 14 of the G20 economies, according to data from governments, industry and
consumer groups.
A crash in the prices of photovoltaic panels and improved
technology that harnesses more power from the sun has placed solar on the cusp
of a global boom, analysts say, who compare its rise to shale oil.
"Just as shale extraction reconfigured oil and gas, no
other technology is closer to transforming power markets than distributed and
utility scale solar," said consultancy Wood Mackenzie, which has a
focus on the oil and gas industry. - Reuter
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