Japan Press Weekly

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2013 January 9 - 15 [ECONOMY]

Small town strives for renewable energy development

A small town on the shore of the Japan Sea in Western Japan runs a wind power plant and actively promotes renewable energy. It is Hokuei Town in Tottori Prefecture, with a population of 16,000.

The town-run wind power plant has nine windmills standing on the Hojo sand hill. Operating since 2005, it generates 23,900,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year.

The amount of power generation is equivalent to the amount of electricity yearly used by 6,600 houses and it is estimated to cut 13,300 tons of CO2 emissions a year.

All electricity generated at this plant is sold to the Chugoku Electric Power Co. The annual income from the power sold amounts to about 250 million yen, which brings “a small amount of surplus” to the town, according to a town official.

The local administration expects that a feed-in tariffs system launched last year will create an additional annual income of 200 million yen. “While securing funds for a major rebuilding of the facility, we plan to start some programs next fiscal year to return the surplus income to residents,” said the town official.

Hasegawa Shoji, a town assembly member of the Japanese Communist Party, proposed at an assembly meeting in December that the town use part of the incomes to subsidize residents for house repairs as a way to return the revenue to them as well as to increase local jobs.

Hasegawa also stressed the need to improve the town’s subsidy program to install solar power panels on residents’ homes. In order to promote installment of solar power generation systems in residential areas, the local government currently provides 60,000 yen per 1 kilowatt.

Hokuei Town also leases its land for renewable energy development. Last month, a local company opened a solar power plant at a site it leases from the town. With 3,136 solar panels, the plant generates 750 kilowatts of electricity.