Japan's Energy Management Policy Experiences and Their Implications for Developing Countries

Japan recognized the importance of energy conservation promotion for energy security through two oil crises and has aggressively proceeded with energy conservation measures. Meanwhile, as global warming fears have recently grown worldwide, the role of energy conservation as a global warming prevention means has attracted attention. Particularly, energy conservation effects of energy consumption management have been internationally recognized. For example, the importance of these effects was discussed in the International Energy Agency’s 25 recommendations announced toward the Group of Eight Toyako Summit in 2008. Energy management systems have existed in Japan since before World War II. For more than the past half century, Japan has flexibly modified and gradually improved these systems in response to situational changes. For example, the initial energy management policy indirectly called for energy conservation promotion by encouraging business operators to make voluntary energy-saving efforts and become more conscious about energy conservation. In response to the two oil crises in the 1970s and the growing needs for global warming prevention measures in the 1990s, however, the present policy more directly calls for energy conservation by emphasizing the improvement of energy efficiency and the reduction of energy consumption. Japan has thus improved its energy management policy in response to situational changes over more than half of the past century. But developing countries can build on Japan’s policy changes and create energy conservation promotion systems without consuming as much time as Japan. Of course, developing countries have various social, economic and political situations and various energy supply/demand characteristics. Japanese systems can not necessarily be transferred to all developing countries without modifications. From the viewpoint of “the advantage of backwardness,” however, it may be useful for future energy conservation policy to create systems meeting specific national conditions based on Japan’s experiences. In this report that focuses on Japan’s energy management policy, Chapter 1 systematically puts in order historical changes of the policy and reports surveys about the actual implementation of relevant systems. Chapter 2 sets up a theoretical hypothesis on the implementation of the designated energy management factory system based on research and analysis results given in Chapter 1 and puts in order findings through interviews and other case study analyses to reach a conclusion. Using such traditional policy science research method, the chapter assesses the system. Finally, Chapter 3, based on analyses in Chapters 1 and 2, compiles implications for policy planning in developing countries where energy demand is expected to increase.