None of the Japanese government’s 214 biomass promotion projects has produced any effective results in the struggle against global warming, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said Tuesday in a report.
The ministry has urged the other six ministries conducting biomass projects using sewage sludge, garbage and wood, including the farm and environment ministries, to take corrective action.
The internal affairs ministry’s Administrative Evaluation Bureau found in a study of the biomass projects over a six-year period through March 2009 that the cumulative budget spending for them totaled about 6.55 trillion yen.
The ministries, however, have yet to confirm the financial results for 92, or 44%, of the 214 projects, with one bureau official saying, “The figures tell everything. The ministries need to produce certain results as they are using taxpayers’ money.”
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries spent about 1.6 billion yen on a project to produce livestock feedstuff from unsold lunchboxes at convenience stores. But the project was abandoned after the management firm collapsed, the report said.
The Environment Ministry and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry were found to have extended subsidies to such projects at the same time, it said.
While the six ministries have argued 161, or 75%, of the 214 projects have produced some results, the bureau has concluded that none of them has produced results that would lead to the formation of a recycling-based society, the report said.
