After a quick introduction to Mitchy, a cute, spectacled ghost character, dozens of guests are ushered into a dark room with a large screen and rows of virtual reality headsets.
The headsets transform the guests into obake (ghosts) and bring them into a whimsical world where smiling supernatural beings hand out a seemingly limitless number of gifts. The playful scene soon turns dark with the entrance of King C.O2, a large horned character with a Darth Vader-like voice.
“Human greed brought me to life,” the character bellows. “I’m going to rule the world.” Obake Wonderland is one of several pavilions at the Osaka Expo that focuses on the climate crisis and what the world can do to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
But the organization behind the pavilion — the Japan Gas Association — might raise some eyebrows.
The main purpose of the pavilion is to detail a new type of gas called e-methane, which the association, including member utilities such as Tokyo Gas and Osaka Gas, is counting on to reduce emissions in order to meet net-zero goals.
In addition to the VR experience and the pavilion’s array of cute characters, the facility also explains the process of making e-methane and how it can help eliminate the gas industry’s massive annual total of planet-warming emissions. The Gas Pavilion had welcomed around 500,000 visitors by the end of August, making it one of the most popular exhibits at the expo.
But it's also not without controversy.
While major Japanese gas companies say that e-methane is an essential tool to fight climate change, industry experts paint a different picture.
Critics say the myriad hurdles that need to be overcome for its widespread use will not come soon enough to help a planet that is rapidly warming, while efforts to position gas as part of a carbon-neutral future amount to greenwashing.
The case for e-methane
Despite pledges to decarbonize the energy sector, Japan remains the world’s No. 2 importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), with natural gas accounting for 29.9% of Japan’s electricity generation in 2023, behind only coal, at 30.1%, and far ahead of cleaner sources such as solar, 10%, nuclear, 9.5%, and hydropower, 8.7%.
Japan’s urban centers essentially run on natural gas, with large utilities such as Tokyo Gas, Osaka Gas and Toho Gas supplying millions of customers through a vast network of pipes.
Even if Japan continues to pivot back toward nuclear energy and manages to rapidly scale up the share of renewables, it’s likely that gas will continue to be a key energy source for years — a 2023 report by the industry ministry projected a 20% share of electricity generation for natural gas in 2030.
While natural gas does produce fewer carbon dioxide emissions when burned, many scientists argue it’s even dirtier than coal when accounting for leaks of methane — a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 — during extraction and transportation.
This raises serious questions about the viability of gas as a “transition fuel,” a label that’s often used by the gas industry.
The gas association says it has implemented various strategies to reduce methane leaks in Japan. Globally, the International Energy Agency says the oil, gas and coal sectors are responsible for 120 million metric tons of methane emissions on an annual basis, a figure that has remained relatively flat since 2010 and is likely underreported due to a lack of measurement data.
All of this comes as Japan has pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 in order to slow down climate change, creating the impetus for utilities to find ways to decarbonize.
To that end, the Japan Gas Association sees e-methane as its silver bullet.
E-methane is produced through a synthesis of hydrogen and captured CO2 in a process called methanation. Because it uses recycled CO2, e-methane does not increase carbon emissions even though it does produce CO2 when burned, according to the gas association.
The association also touts another key benefit: E-methane can make use of most of the existing infrastructure that’s already in place for natural gas.
That means the process of using e-methane in local supply networks could theoretically begin at any time and without consumers even noticing a difference.
During the Osaka Expo, the gas association produced e-methane derived from CO2 captured by the Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE), with the end product being used to fuel the gas stove at the expo guest house.
“Even if 100% of city gas is substituted with e-methane, everything can be used as before, from liquefaction plants, shipping, storage, pipeline networks and other consumption equipment in each household,” said Raita Okamoto, chief of the gas association’s international relations section.
But standing in the way of a net-zero gas industry are a number of obstacles — many of which the association acknowledges — including costs and the ability to produce e-methane at scale.
The roadblocks
The issues facing e-methane production start with one crucial barrier: cost.
Hydrogen is a key component of e-methane and there are several ways to produce it. “Green hydrogen,” which the gas association is planning to use, is produced with renewables and costs a whopping $4.50 to $12 per kilogram, per Bloomberg NEF. That compares with the higher-polluting “gray hydrogen,” produced with the use of natural gas, which can cost as little as $1 per kg.
“Most of the cost of e-methane is the cost of hydrogen,” said Yuji Kumai, the general manager of the association’s international relations section. “If the cost of hydrogen declines, the cost of e-methane will be reduced accordingly.”
On that front, the Bloomberg NEF report expects the price of green hydrogen to fall over the next half-decade and become cheaper than gray hydrogen in certain countries, including China and India. For Japan, the report predicts costs will fall to about $3 per kg by 2030, compared with over $8 per kg in 2023.
But cost isn’t the only concern when it comes to scaling up the use of e-methane.
Sam Reynolds, the Asia LNG and gas research lead at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a U.S. nonprofit think tank, sees inefficiencies throughout the e-methane value chain.
“You’re converting renewable energy into hydrogen, you’re then sending that hydrogen through a network of transportation and compression and you’re also using carbon capture and storage,” he said. “Once you go through all those steps, losses along the system add up to over 70% of the amount of energy you used to make it.
“This is just a really energy inefficient process,” he added.
The industry acknowledges those inefficiencies, but stresses that improvements can be made with technological advancements.
“What we need is to develop more efficient e-methane producing technologies,” said Mao Hasegawa, a spokesperson with the gas association’s public relations office, adding that Osaka Gas and Tokyo Gas are working on improving energy conversion rates.
“Currently the energy conversion efficiency is about 55% to 60%. However with new methanation technologies it could improve to 80% to 90%,” she said.
According to Motoyuki Hirabayashi, senior general manager of Osaka Gas, it’s just a matter of time until the technologies improve.
“I believe it will take more time and we need to be patient,” Hirabayashi, told a seminar in Kyoto last month.
For many experts, however, the time it will take to scale up production is a significant problem for a world that is rapidly warming and needs to decarbonize on a time frame that is far shorter than many of these solutions are working toward.
“In terms of technological readiness, we’re still in demonstration, pilot phases,” Reynolds said.
The gas association aims to have e-methane make up 1% to 5% of city gas by 2030 and 50% to 90% by 2050. In the case of the latter projection, the difference would be made up through natural gas used in conjunction with carbon capture, utilization and storage, as well as carbon offsets.
The wide range of those targets present another concern for Reynolds.
“They are pitching a carbon neutral solution that isn’t technologically ready or economically viable, only to start to backslide on it when it looks increasingly unreasonable,” Reynolds said.
“I think the public campaign to promote e-methane as a carbon neutral or climate effective solution is actually designed to mask some of the major, major flaws with this very new, first-of-a-kind technology.”
How energy giants greenwash
When it comes to greenwashing, Melissa Aronczyk, a professor at Rutgers University and an expert in climate communication, has seen all of the typical strategies.
Some of the standouts: Using jargon, misleading symbols or vagueness to provide cover for unsustainable practices; promising green initiatives publicly while lobbying against those initiatives privately; and using misleading statements or outright lies to support eco-friendly claims.
“Companies want to align their values with the values of their consumers ... and so to do that they promote ‘green talk’ but sometimes they avoid the ‘green walk,’” Aronczyk said.
Fossil fuel giants are among the worst offenders.
There’s a good reason for that, Aronczyk said, because their very existence is not compatible with a zero-carbon future.
“For oil and gas companies in particular, the ultimate large-scale change that these companies have to do would really be to cease to exist or to completely refashion their way of doing business.”
Aronczyk, while stressing that she is not an expert in e-methane or the Japanese gas industry, sees signs of greenwashing with the way the Gas Pavilion has been presented.
A big part of that is Mitchy and other cute characters that draw the curiosity of children.
“Kids are growing up with these oil and gas companies in their lives and don’t question the benefits that they bring, and that is really the strategy ... a social license to operate,” Aronczyk said.
The gas association denied the pavilion was an attempt at greenwashing and instead stressed that the goal of its exhibit was to encourage children, in particular, to think about the future of energy.
“The pavilion introduces actual efforts and plans for carbon neutral city gas, conveying the message that each of us can change the future by changing our awareness and behavior,” the association wrote in an email.
Aronczyk, who has worked in marketing and is well-versed in common corporate strategies, stressed that consumers should continue to push for honesty and transparency on the climate issue.
“To the extent that these companies are genuinely concerned about decarbonizing the economy, about going along with the energy transition and transforming their production practices, I want to believe that the potential is there,” she said.
“But too often what I see are empty claims, claims that are just not credible, inconsistent or conflicting claims to climate responsibility or corporate responsibility.”
Back at the Gas Pavilion, things are not going well for our hero Mitchy. King CO.2 has swallowed him whole and is now going on a rampage around the virtual world.
As the destruction unfolds, the narrator pleads with guests to help.
“Put your hand over your heart and wish as hard as you can to save the world and Mitchy,” the voice cries. Guests are then urged to shout “bakero” (“transform”) as they direct beams of light at King CO.2.
The plan proves to be a success. Mitchy is saved and the beams, later revealed to be hydrogen, transform King CO.2 into something lighter and more pleasant: e-methane, “an energy of the future.”
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.