Nine of the nation's 10 utilities failed to meet their self-imposed five-year targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 20 percent, an industry body said Monday.

Their failure was caused mainly by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which forced them to revert to thermal power generation after the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake triggered the shutdown of virtually all of the reactors in Japan.

The goal of the 2007 project was to cut emissions of the main greenhouse gas by 20 percent from their levels in 1990, by fiscal 2012.