The long-distance energy 'dialogue' between the revival of nuclear power and green sources

There is a red thread linking Italy and Japan on energy. Because the government in Tokyo has decided to accelerate its path towards net zero by taking a path in many respects similar to the one already taken by our country. Which, especially after Russia's decision to reduce gas supplies to Europe, has focused even more on diversifying its energy mix.

The same objective, in fact, is at the heart of the plan outlined by the Japanese Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, at the end of December and aimed at significantly increasing the share of renewables within the domestic market. Starting, first of all, with a decisive change in strategy compared to the restrictions initiated by the country in 2011, when a violent earthquake triggered a tsunami in the north, devastating the coastal city of Okuma, located in the prefecture of Fukushima, and causing, as is well known, a very serious disaster at the nuclear power plant housed in the region.

There will not, therefore, be a ban on the plants - which Ishiba himself supported in the past before becoming the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party - because the government wants, instead, to relaunch 'clean' nuclear power now, alongside a very strong growth in renewables. In the prime minister's ambitious plans, green energy will therefore find more and more space in meeting domestic needs. In fact, the goal is to reach, by 2040, the 50% production threshold for alternative energies such as solar and photovoltaic (with a minimum target, however, of 40%), in order to shore up the goal of carbon neutrality. While nuclear power should make up around 20% of the future national mix according to a trajectory that had already been outlined by former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and that Ishiba has now made his own, correcting his original hostility.

A turnaround, therefore, which is no mean feat if one considers that, according to the latest data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), renewable sources accounted for just over a quarter of electricity production in the Land of the Rising Sun last year, still 60% dependent on coal and natural gas. While nuclear power - which, before the Fukushima accident in 2011, ensured about 30 per cent of Japanese electricity with 54 active reactors - now accounts for about 8.5 per cent. But this figure will definitely have to rise, also because the new plan will be used to support the impetuous growth in energy consumption fuelled by the spread of data centres, which are big energy-guzzlers, and the semiconductor industry, which Japan wants to revive.

To do this, therefore, Ishiba will have to speed up the 'machine' on both fronts. He will also have to overcome the not insignificant public resistance to nuclear power, which the government considers an essential step towards carbon neutrality. And this move recalls the strategy of the Italian government, which, on the input of the Minister for the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, has reopened the game, launching in recent months a National Platform for Sustainable Nuclear Power and more recently approving a draft enabling act with the aim of reconstituting a regulatory framework capable of supporting a return to nuclear power. Positions, therefore, very close to those of the Tokyo government. It is no coincidence that Minister Pichetto Fratin is expected in Japan after the summer so that Osaka 2025 and the Italian Pavilion will also create 'a bridge' between the two countries on such a crucial issue for the future of both countries as energy policy.