N-plant exports eyed to offset gas emissions

From Yomiuri Newspaper

The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry is working on a plan to export nuclear power plants to other countries as part of efforts to trim this nation's greenhouse gas emissions, according to government sources.
The ministry will conduct a preliminary survey from June on the plan, which would enable Japan to count as its own reductions in greenhouse gas emissions achieved in emerging and developing countries as a result of using Japanese nuclear power plants and related technology, the sources said.

The ministry will incorporate the plan into the government's new economic growth strategy. It aims to achieve two goals: economic growth through exports of infrastructure and the promotion of measures to fight global warming.

The ministry plans to sign bilateral deals with emerging economies and developing countries in Asia to promote international efforts to tackle global warming.

The sources said Indonesia is likely to support the ministry's research, which will calculate how much greenhouse gas emissions would drop in countries that imported Japanese nuclear power plants and Japanese technology for building highly efficient coal-burning thermal power plants.
The ministry aims to introduce the scheme in 2013 at the earliest as Japan's own international emissions trading system. It hopes the scheme will help this country achieve its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

The United Nations already has a system called the clean development mechanism, under which industrialized nations conduct conservation measures in developing countries and count the emissions reductions in the latter as their own.
However, the U.N. system is deemed inconvenient in that it requires complicated procedures and does not cover exports of nuclear power plants and related technology.

The ministry estimates that if Japanese companies' advanced technology was introduced at all the planned coal-powered thermal plants in China, that country would be able to cut 8.3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to about 6 percent of Japan's annual greenhouse gas emissions.

(May. 17, 2010)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T100516001788.htm