Representatives of leading Japanese industries said they would keep cutting greenhouse gas emissions even if Tokyo’s opposition to binding itself to caps beyond 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol causes a breakdown of talks that end this week.
Industry officials said high energy costs in Japan and a drive to export Japanese clean-energy and energy-saving technology to emerging markets would maintain the momentum of declining emissions by Japanese industry regardless of government targets.
The current round of U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, is still split between rich and poor nations on steps to fight global warming.
Japan should stick to its position regardless of the possibility that this could lead to a failure of the U.N. talks, Nippon Steel Corp Executive Vice President Kosei Shindo told a hastily called news conference on Thursday to discuss the climate talks.
“Even if Japan exits the framework of the Kyoto Protocol, we will continue making our global contribution (in emissions cuts),” Shindo said.
“Japan has made efforts in the past and will keep doing so, like improving manufacturing processes, developing products and transferring technology to developing countries. That would all contribute to cuts in CO2 around the globe,” he said.
Japan has said it would not agree to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond the end of its first phase in 2012, saying the pact is out-dated as it covers less than 30 percent of current global emissions, compared with 58 percent in 1997 when it was agreed to in Japan’s ancient capital of Kyoto.
Japan is instead seeking a broader agreement based on the non-binding Copenhagen Accord reached last year, in which major emitters such as the United States and China took part and Japan pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
The United States is the sole rich country which did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
Officials representing the top nine CO2-emitting industries in Japan on Thursday reiterated their opposition to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which they said was neither fair nor effective, in line with the Japanese government’s position.
The officials also said an extension would boost emissions by countries not bound by the Kyoto Protocol, while worsening global warming and entrenching the out-dated Kyoto framework.
The nine industries — steel, power, chemicals, oil, cement, paper, electric appliances, auto and gas — account for about one-third of Japanese emissions of CO2, the main greenhouse gas.
“Even if Japan finds itself being backed into a corner, it should remain confident that its position is correct,” said Shindo, who is also vice chairman of the environment and energy committee of the Japan Iron and Steel Federation.
Japanese industry, which relies heavily on imported energy, has carried out a series of energy-saving measures since the oil shocks of the 1970s, reducing Japanese CO2 emissions per unit of economic output to half that of the European Union and the United States.
Further cuts in emissions thus cost Japanese companies more than their global rivals, many of which are now in South Korea, China and India which do not have emission-cutting obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.
