The world’s developed countries have committed to phasing out coal over the next seven years. But that is not the case for Japan, which unilaterally claims it can mitigate the damage caused by coal to the planet.
Nowhere is this more evident than at the nation’s largest coal-fired power plant in Hekinan, a small city in central Japan. At the power plant, a site the size of 40 football fields is covered with 400,000 tons of jet-black stakes.
Starting next spring, Jera, which owns the site, hopes to demonstrate that ammonia, which emits no carbon dioxide when burned, can be mixed with coal in a boiler. The use of this new technology has sparked debate about whether it is better to find cleaner ways to use coal, or to dispose of it as soon as possible in favor of renewable energy.
The company says the ammonia law will help reduce dangerous emissions in the fight against global warming. In an effort originally conceived and heavily subsidized by the Japanese government, the company is one of several power companies planning to use ammonia in a process marketed as “clean coal.”
By using ammonia, companies can “use our existing plant rather than building a completely new plant,” says Katsuya Tanigawa, general manager of the Jera Hekinan Plant.
Japan derives nearly a third of its electricity supply from coal, one of the world’s dirtiest sources of energy. Critics, however, argue that the use of ammonia will only increase Japan’s reliance on fossil fuels and could increase the carbon emissions associated with ammonia production. Burning ammonia can also produce nitrogen oxides, which are also toxic to humans and are another emission to control.
“What we need now is to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants, not to explore technologies that may or may not be feasible,” said Catherine Petersen, senior policy adviser at think tank E3G.
Japan’s energy insecurity has skyrocketed since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Immediately after the disaster, Japan shut down all its nuclear power plants, wiping out 30 percent of the country’s electricity supply overnight. To compensate, the country’s utilities have rushed to build new coal-fired power plants, even as the world moves away from fossil fuels.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has recently stepped up efforts to restart the country’s nuclear power grid, but communities host to nuclear power are resisting.
Japan, the world’s third largest economy, has few natural resources of its own and can produce only 11 percent of the energy it needs without importing fuel. One of the least self-sufficient countries among the wealthiest countries in the world.
At the G7 environment ministers’ meeting in Sapporo this spring, Japan was the only country to reject a commitment to cut coal use to zero by 2030.
The government and Japan’s power industry point to many hurdles to building renewable energy sources quickly, including Japan’s geographical isolation, mountainous terrain, deep seas and annual typhoon season.
Like China, where President Xi Jinping recently said it would follow its own “tempo and intensity” in reducing carbon emissions, Japanese officials say Japan has its own schedule and methods.
“We want to climb the same mountain to the same summit,” said Atsushi Kodaka, head of the Energy Strategy Office at the Ministry of International Trade. “But our climbing routes don’t have to be the same as everyone else’s.”
The power industry is also reluctant to abandon coal, having recently spent a lot of money building new power plants. Since 2011, Japan’s power companies have built 40 coal-fired power plants, nearly a quarter of Japan’s total coal-fired power grid, with the new Jera plant commissioned last month.
The Japanese government is working with industry to invest about 152 trillion yen (about $1.1 trillion) over a decade to help achieve net zero carbon emissions. The Ministry of Trade has said it will cut coal power generation to 19% of its electricity supply by 2030, with ammonia technology accounting for about 1%, with the potential for more in the future.
Jera knows it needs to convince potentially skeptical people about its plans, so it advertises in movie theaters and distributes discount coupons promoting its efforts to develop “zero-emission thermal power plants.”
Japan also hopes to eventually export the technology to its Asian neighbors, which have helped build new coal-fired power plants in recent years.
“We are trying to reduce dependence on coal itself in those countries,” said Masashi Watanabe, a natural resources and energy planner at the Ministry of Trade. “Ammonia co-firing could be one of the solutions.”
In Hekinan, welders recently secured the top of a 700-ton storage tank at the sprawling Gela factory. Large orange pipes litter the ground, waiting to be attached to the pipeline that transports the ammonia to the factory’s boilers.
During a recent test, the company mixed a mixture of 0.02 percent ammonia and a fist-sized amount of coal in a boiler heated to 1,500 degrees Celsius (over 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit). Achieving the next target will be an even bigger challenge.
The company hopes to start testing the world’s first mixture containing as much as 20 percent ammonia by March.
Even if this technology works, a stable, affordable and clean supply of ammonia could put a huge strain on the global supply of ammonia needed for fertilizer production.
government’s own green growth strategy He admits that if all Japanese coal-fired power plants used 20 percent ammonia, “about 20 million tons of ammonia would be needed annually.” This represents the total amount of ammonia currently traded on the world market.
Such supply constraints have made implementation of the ammonia plan “nearly impossible,” said Hajime Takizawa, a climate and energy researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, an independent government-funded research group. But the government says suppliers will meet demand if the technology proves to work.
However, the production of ammonia itself requires electricity, and current methods typically produce it from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. One common process involves heating water to very high temperatures, such as 2,000 degrees Celsius or 3,632 degrees Fahrenheit, to cut off hydrogen atoms and combine them with nitrogen. (Check your high school science textbook for the chemical formula of ammonia.)
A lot of electricity is needed to heat that water, and the first supply of ammonia to Japan is likely to be made using so-called gray or brown electricity. So burning ammonia in a power plant reduces carbon emissions in one location, but producing ammonia can create even more carbon emissions in another.
As a result, the ammonia law has “very little potential for mitigation,” said Masayoshi Iyoda, Japan team leader for the climate activist group 350.org.
Suppliers say they will eventually use renewable energy to produce ammonia or capture and bury the carbon emitted during the process. Given the costs of such methods, analysts say blending ammonia with coal would be more expensive than directly using renewable energy such as wind.
Ultimately, Japan is prioritizing ammonia technology to protect solid industrial interests from new renewable energy suppliers, critics say. “They are well aware that they are the losers in this change,” says Kimiko Hirata, founder of the research and advocacy group Climate Integrate. “So they are keen to protect the status quo and vested interests for as long as possible.”
