Asia-Pacific, Climate Change, Environment, Headlines

JAPAN: Citizen Cash Powering Windmills

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Dec 19 2005 (IPS) - Tired of waiting for the government to increase Japan’s alternative energy supply, grassroots organisations have started raising money from individuals to generate wind power and are reporting positive results.

“Our programmes represent the power of civilians to reduce global warming in Japan. The idea has caught on and we expect to move ahead even faster next year,” says Shinichiro Abe, spokesperson for Community Wind Power, the country’s only company promoting wind power and supported by a citizens’ fund.

Hokkaido Green Fund was launched five years ago by a group of environmentally conscious residents of the northern island who collected five percent of members’ annual electricity bills. Launched with Fund money, Community Wind Power built the first wind turbine in 2001 in Hmatonebetsucho facing the windy Ohutsuki Sea at a cost of two million U.S. dollars.

Today, the Green Fund supports five wind turbines that generate between 1,000 and 1,500 kilowatts, enough to supply roughly 800 – 1,000 households each.

“We got the idea of community-financed windmills from Denmark, where the program is well supported,” says the Green Fund’s Toru Suzuki. “In Japan too, the idea is catching on among the growing number of ecologically aware people.”

Mihoko Ota and her retired husband became investors in the Hokkaido Green Fund when they paid the standard fee of 4,800 dollars to help build the windmill.

“The Green Fund was exciting for us because we were looking for an investment that provided more than money. We were happy to invest in a project that promised a clean environment as well as knowing our deposit would be safe for a stipulated period of 17 years,” says Ota. According to Suzuki, more than 200 people invested in the first wind turbine.

Currently there are around 3,000 investors in the Green Fund, who receive interest of between two and three percent on their deposits. The Fund uses the money to support grassroots environmental groups that create projects to protect the environment.

To date, the Fund has also financed five new wind turbines that generate between 1000 to 1,500 kilowatts each. The electricity is sold to large power companies operating in the area. It plans to support five more turbines in 2006, and has now gained the support of the Japanese government, which has agreed to provide subsidies to back up the Green Fund.

Michiaki Endo, head of the Mirai Energy Forum, received the Fund’s backing to help raise investments to build a three-million-dollar wind turbine in 2007 in his hometown Kamizu-shi, about 120 km east of Tokyo.

Kamizu-shi already has 16 windmills but Endo’s project will mark the first citizen-funded turbine to receive state subsidies. Endo says money is still being collected for the large turbine that he expects will power 1,000 households.

“The money generated from wind power will be used for cleaning beaches that line Kamizu-shi,” he adds.

Wind power is becoming a popular alternative energy in Japan given its relative low construction costs – around one-third the price of solar power.

Environmentalists hope the economic appeal of wind power plants will help increase the supply of natural energy sources in Japan, which now provide about 1.5 percent of the nation’s total electricity supply. Wind power’s share of alternative energies is about three percent.

Japan passed a regulation in 2003 obliging companies to increase their share of alternative energy capacity to 1.3 percent from the current 0.4 percent.

“The citizen funded project is aimed at giving an electricity choice to citizens concerned about rising CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions in Japan that contributes to global warming,” says Suzuki.

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