Japan could be left behind in renewable energy innovation unless it creates a large domestic market in this field, Ashley Seager, economics correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, warned in the May 23 symposium.
While nuclear power has been touted here as a clean source of energy in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and subsidized for many years, Japan "does not seem to want to give any boost — at least in the short term — to renewable energy," he said.
A decade ago, Seager said, many people expected Japan to dominate every aspect of renewable energy technologies such as solar panels and wind-power generation.