Japan has no immediate plan to review its emission reduction pledge for 2020, the environment minister said on Friday, in the first official comment about the target after a nuclear crisis has boosted the country’s need for power from fossil fuels.
“We’d like to maintain it (the target),” Environment Minister Ryu Matsumoto was quoted as saying at a news conference by a ministry spokesman.
Earlier this week, Japan’s Trade Minister Banri Kaieda said at a news conference that the question of whether Japan’s 2020 pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels is viable or not is an issue to be addressed some time later.
Japan’s nuclear crisis after the March 11 quake and tsunami stretched to three weeks with engineers still struggling to cool down the troubled nuclear plant in Fukushima, northeast Japan, and preventing radiation from leaking.
Climate delegates from almost 200 nations meet in Bangkok next week, the first U.N. meeting since environment ministers agreed a package last December in Mexico. The nuclear crisis is likely to overshadow the 2011 sessions about low-carbon energies.
