Japan Says It Can Make Coal Cleaner. Critics Say Its Plan Is ‘Almost Impossible.’

The world’s superior economies have dedicated to phasing out coal over the subsequent seven years. But not Japan, which stands alone in insisting it will possibly make coal much less damaging to the planet.

Nowhere is that extra evident than on the nation’s largest coal-fired energy plant in Hekinan, a small metropolis in central Japan the place 400,000 tons of jet-black piles are unfold throughout a plot the scale of 40 soccer fields.

Starting subsequent spring, Jera, the corporate that owns the location, desires to reveal that it will possibly mix ammonia — which doesn’t emit carbon dioxide when burned — with coal in its boilers. The use of this new expertise is prompting a debate over whether or not it’s higher to search out cleaner methods of utilizing coal, or to scrap it as quickly as attainable in favor of renewable power.

The firm says the ammonia technique can cut back harmful emissions within the combat towards world warming. In an effort initially conceived — and closely backed — by Japan’s authorities, it’s one among a number of energy corporations planning to make use of ammonia in a course of marketed as “clean coal.”

With ammonia, the businesses can “use the plants we have rather than building entirely new ones,” mentioned Katsuya Tanigawa, the final supervisor at Jera’s Hekinan web site.

Japan attracts practically a 3rd of its electrical energy provide from coal, one of many world’s dirtiest sources of power. But critics say using ammonia merely extends Japan’s reliance on fossil fuels and will doubtlessly improve carbon emissions because the ammonia is produced. Burning ammonia may produce nitrogen oxide, which is poisonous to people and is one other emission to be managed.

“We need to be reducing emissions from coal power plants now, not exploring a technology that may or may not be feasible,” mentioned Katrine Petersen, a senior coverage adviser at E3G, a suppose tank.

Anxiety in Japan about power has grown exponentially since an earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown on the Fukushima Daichi nuclear energy plant in 2011. Right after the catastrophe, Japan shut down all of its nuclear vegetation, extinguishing 30 p.c of the nation’s electrical energy provide in a single day. To compensate, the nation’s energy corporations scurried to construct new coal vegetation even because the world was shifting away from fossil fuels.

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has lately intensified efforts to reboot the nation’s nuclear energy community, however communities that host the vegetation have resisted.

Japan, the world’s third-largest financial system, has few of its personal pure assets, and might produce solely 11 p.c of its power wants with out gas imports — one of many lowest self-sufficiency charges among the many world’s wealthiest nations.

At a gathering of setting ministers from the Group of seven leaders in Sapporo this spring, Japan was the one nation that refused to decide to bringing its coal utilization all the way down to zero by 2030.

The authorities and the nation’s energy trade level to quite a few hurdles to constructing renewable power sources shortly, together with Japan’s geographic isolation, mountainous terrain, deep sea waters and annual storm season.

Along with China, which President Xi Jinping lately mentioned would comply with its personal “tempo and intensity” in chopping carbon emissions, Japanese officers say their nation has its personal timetable and strategies, as effectively.

“We want to go up the same mountain to the same summit,” mentioned Atsushi Kodaka, the director of the power technique workplace within the Trade Ministry. “But our climbing route doesn’t have to be the same as everyone else.”

The energy trade can be reluctant to desert coal as a result of it has spent a lot lately to construct new vegetation. Since 2011, Japanese energy corporations have constructed 40 coal vegetation — practically 1 / 4 of Japan’s complete coal-fired community — with a brand new Jera plant logging on final month.

Together with trade, the Japanese authorities has dedicated about 152 trillion yen (about $1.1 trillion) over 10 years to assist the nation obtain internet zero carbon emissions. By 2030, the Trade Ministry says, it’ll cut back coal-based era to 19 p.c of the ability provide, with the ammonia expertise comprising about 1 p.c, and it’s more likely to rise.

Jera is aware of it has to persuade a doubtlessly skeptical public of its plans, and so it’s working commercials in film theaters and handing out low cost coupons that promote its efforts to develop “zero-emission thermal power.”

Japan additionally hopes to finally export the expertise to its neighbors in Asia, the place it has helped construct new coal vegetation in recent times.

“We are trying to decrease the dependence on coal itself in such countries,” mentioned Masashi Watanabe, a pure assets and power planner within the Trade Ministry. “Ammonia co-firing could be one solution.”

In Hekinan, welders lately secured the highest of a 700-ton storage tank on the sprawling Jera plant. Multiple giant orange pipes lay scattered on the bottom, ready to be fitted right into a pipeline that may transport ammonia to the plant’s boilers.

During a current check, the corporate blended a combination of 0.02 p.c ammonia with fist-size chunks of coal in a boiler heated to 1,500 diploma Celsius, greater than 2,700 levels Fahrenheit. Meeting its subsequent goal shall be a much bigger problem.

By March, the corporate desires to start testing mixtures made up of as a lot as 20 p.c ammonia, turning into the primary on this planet to take action.

Even if the expertise works, procuring a gentle, reasonably priced and clear provide of ammonia might considerably pressure the world’s provide of the compound, which is required to supply fertilizer.

The authorities’s personal Green Growth Strategy acknowledges that if all of Japan’s coal-fired vegetation used 20 p.c ammonia, “they would need about 20 million tons of ammonia per year” — equal to the whole quantity of ammonia at the moment traded on the world market.

Such provide constraints made the ammonia plan “almost impossible” to execute, mentioned Hajime Takizawa, a local weather and power researcher on the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, a government-funded, impartial analysis group. The authorities, although, says that after it proves that the expertise works, suppliers will meet demand.

But producing ammonia itself requires electrical energy, which below present strategies is usually generated from fossil fuels like coal or pure fuel. In one widespread course of, water is heated to extraordinarily excessive temperatures — as excessive as 2,000 levels Celsius, or 3,632 levels Fahrenheit — in order that hydrogen atoms may be cut up off and mixed with nitrogen. (Check out your highschool science textbooks for the chemical components of ammonia!)

Heating that water requires plenty of energy, and the ammonia provides that may initially circulate to Japan will possible be made utilizing so-called grey or brown electrical energy. So whereas burning ammonia in an influence plant reduces carbon emissions in a single place, making ammonia might generate extra carbon emissions in one other.

As a outcome, the ammonia technique has “a very tiny mitigation potential,” mentioned Masayoshi Iyoda, the chief of the Japan staff for 350.org, a local weather activist group.

Suppliers say they may finally use renewable power to make ammonia or seize the carbon emitted in the course of the manufacturing course of and bury it within the floor. Analysts say that given the prices of such strategies, mixing ammonia and coal shall be dearer than merely utilizing renewable power like wind energy instantly.

Ultimately, critics say, Japan is prioritizing the ammonia expertise to guard entrenched industrial pursuits towards new renewable power suppliers. “They are fully aware that they are losers in this shift,” mentioned Kimiko Hirata, a founding father of Climate Integrate, a analysis and advocacy group. “So they are really big on protecting the status quo and vested interests as long as possible.”