Tatsuya Terazawa: The strategic energy plan that was decided in 2021 had the exclusive focus on reducing CO2 or greenhouse gas emission. This time many things have happened in between. While we still maintain our pledge to realize carbon neutrality toward 2050, the importance of ensuring energy security has been elevated.
Bill Loveless: Increasingly, countries are seeking ways to balance climate ambitions with practical realities. Perhaps nowhere is this tension more evident than in Japan. For years, it set aggressive decarbonization targets positioning itself as a climate leader, despite limited domestic resources. But recent geopolitical earthquakes — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, increasing energy demand and a near blackout in Tokyo — have forced a dramatic reassessment of priorities. Japan’s new strategic energy plan approved in February represents this shift in calculus. While maintaining long-term carbon neutrality goals, it elevates energy security concerns, and it introduces a plan B that acknowledges technological deployment might not match ambitious timelines. So how can a resource-constrained country like Japan pursue both climate goals and energy security? What role will energy sources like LNG and nuclear power play in this new strategy? And as nations everywhere face similar pressures, does Japan’s approach offer a model for pragmatic energy planning in an increasingly unstable world?
This is Columbia Energy Exchange, a weekly podcast from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. I’m Bill Loveless. Today on the show, Tatsuya Terazawa. Tatsuya Terazawa is the chairman and CEO of Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics, a think tank that provides analysis and policy recommendations based on Japan’s goals of carbon neutrality and energy security. Before joining the institute, he served as the senior advisor of Japan’s cabinet office, assisting with the government’s COVID-19 response and its energy strategy. Earlier, he held a number of roles at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. I spoke with Tatsuya about Japan’s new strategic energy plan, which marks a shift in the country’s energy priorities, moving from primarily focusing on greenhouse gas reduction to placing a greater emphasis on energy security. We explore these tensions and Japan’s attempts to navigate them in an era of compounding global challenges. I hope you enjoy our conversation, which took place on the sidelines of the 2025 Columbia Global Energy Summit in New York City earlier this spring.
Tatsuya Terazawa, welcome to Columbia Energy Exchange.
Tatsuya Terazawa: My pleasure to join this podcast.
Bill Loveless: Well, we’re happy to have you here. It’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to sit down with folks such as yourself at this meeting, and particularly always a great opportunity to discuss Japan just given its prominence as an industrial power in the world, but also given its energy needs and its dependence on foreign sources of energy. So with that, what I’m looking forward to discussing is a new energy strategy plan that Japan is developing that will mark what I understand is a significant change for the country, one that shifts priorities from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to ensuring energy security. Tell us about that plan.
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, first of all, let me briefly explain why do we have strategic energy plans to begin with? It is mandated by a law that about every three years, the government is supposed to come up with its strategic energy plan and present the future outlook of the energy mix for Japan and the necessary policies to achieve those energy mix. The previous one, the sixth strategic energy plan, was decided in October, 2021. The new one, the seventh strategic energy plan was decided by the cabinet on February 18th of this year. So the difference between the previous one and the current one as you refer to, is significant. Just recall October, 2021, the world was heading for a COP 26 in Glasgow. So there was so much discussion about the reduction of CO2. So the strategic energy plan that was decided in 2021 had the exclusive focus on reducing CO2 or greenhouse gas emission.
This time many things have happened in between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, energy crisis and ChatGPT increasing demand for energy, and also this is uniquely Japanese, which happened on March 22nd, 2022, was a near blackout in the Tokyo region because of shortage of power. So putting everything together while we still maintain our pledge to realize carbon neutrality towards 2050, the importance of securing energy security, ensuring energy security has been elevated. So when people talk about the trilemma of energy policies, having energy security, affordability and environment three years ago is exclusively environment. Now we have a much more balanced, but among those three trilemma, probably energy security has the highest importance and that is reflected in the strategic energy plan that we just decided in February.
Bill Loveless: And it’s a shift in focus that we’re seeing in other countries as well, including the United States. Under this new plan, what would be some of the significant changes that would occur in energy strategy under this new plan?
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, many things have changed in the strategic energy plan, but I’ll just give you a few examples. One is that we attach great importance to thermal power generation. We have been, and we’re pushing for renewable energies, but we see that there are limitations to how far we can go. So towards 2040, we expect that 30 to 40% of our power will be supplied by thermal power, which might be larger than in many advanced economies. In order to ensure that we have lower carbon dioxide emission through thermal power generation, LNG will play a great role replacing coal. So for the power generation, LNG would have a greater role, and LNG would also have a role in making the transition from coal to LNG in the industrial area, not using electricity, we’ll be using LNG to generate heat much more than using coal to generate heat. So the importance of LNG is raised in the new strategic energy plan. That’s number one. Number two, and
Bill Loveless: On LNG, the expectation then is the country’s demand for or use of LNG will increase as well?
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, there’s a range because there is an uncertain future. In 2022, Japan imported 66 million tons of LNG. We have two sets of scenarios for 2040. For the basic scenario, which puts Japan on the track towards carbon neutral to 2050, the expected band for the LNG import will be between 54 million tons per year and 60 million tons per year. So that’s the band for the basic scenario. But this time, which is unique for this strategic energy plan is that we have a plan B. Plan B does not necessarily assume that we will be on track for carbon neutrality. It is based on assumptions that main technology deployment will not be reaching the level we desire. And in those circumstances we may have less renewable energies than we desire. We may have less hydrogen than we desire. We may have less CCS than we desire. As a result, we’ll have more LNG, and under that plan B, the expectation for LNG would be 74 million tons.
And in that case, we have a higher level of LNG compared with today, but we still have that 20 million tons of range for 2040. So once again, in addition to the importance of LNG, the fact that we came up with plan B not necessarily on track towards carbon neutrality in 2050 is a major departure from what we decided in 2021, which was exclusively on reducing GHG or greenhouse gas emission. Another point, maybe a third point after LNG, and this plan B is that renewed interest in nuclear. After the Fukushima nuclear accident, the government policy, the objective was to reduce our dependence on nuclear power as much as possible. But now with a need to ensure sufficient supply of power and also still having decarbonization and also lowering the cost of power, the government’s new goal is to utilize nuclear power as much as possible together with renewable energies as decarbonized source of power. And the government of Japan is now endorsing the replacement i.e. building new nuclear power plants to ensure that we have sufficient supply of power. So that is another major change in our policy compared with the previous strategic energy plan.
Bill Loveless: Yeah, I want to get back to nuclear in a minute, but back on LNG, Japan of course was the leading importer in the world of LNG until a couple of years ago when China took that position as the lead importer of LNG. There appears to be some uncertainty over the supply of LNG for Japan, just given the dynamics of the LNG market these days. Help us understand what’s happening there and what are the concerns that the developers of this plan have?
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, currently Japan has a sufficient level of long-term contracts. By the way, when we faced the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis, the impact on Japan, relatively speaking was smaller than the impact on our European friends because our European friends had to depend upon the LNG from the spot market. Whereas we had a very sufficient level of long-term contract.
Bill Loveless: And Japan in fact was able to help Europe as I understand it,
Tatsuya Terazawa: By
Bill Loveless: Essentially releasing supply to
Tatsuya Terazawa: Europe. And at the time, as we succeeded in restarting some nuclear power plants, still a lot are still sitting idle for various reasons. But by succeeding in restarting some nuclear power plants, we were able to use that excess LNG to help our European friends. So that was what happened during the crisis. So currently we do have a sufficient level of long-term contracts for LNG, but long-term contracts would expire eventually as time goes by after 2029, some of those contracts would start to expire. So as explained, we have a robust demand outlook for LNG, and with the long-term contracts starting to expire after 2029, we have to fill in that gap. And from the lessons we’ve learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we cannot depend upon the spot market exclusively. So we would have to engage in entering into long-term contracts to fill in that gap.
The question is with which country do we engage in long-term contracts? Yeah, what are the best options? Well, before getting to the best options, let me talk about the options. Number one is Russia, LNG. Currently we import 9% of our LNG from Russia and some of those contracts would expire. And we don’t know the status of the sanctions depending upon the situation in Ukraine, but I think it will not be that easy for Japan to continue our dependence on Russia. For what we went through in the past few years, the obvious option would be Australia. Australia is now the largest exporter of LNG to Japan. 40% of our LNG is coming from Australia. We still believe that Australia will be our major supplier of LNG, but there are two reservations. One is that their potential to continue producing LNG may not be as strong as it was in the past because for the future there could be a decline in the production of natural gas.
It depends on the exploration, but the room for substantial increase in the output for natural gas may be a challenge for Australia. Number two, the current administration in Australia has a very green policy and their position towards fossil fuel, including LNG, has been at least cautious to put it diplomatically. So it has added some question marks to the future of Australia as our large producer and exporter of LNG. So what else do we have? Qatar certainly has an option and they have the room for more outputs. But for Qatar, there is a geopolitical issue for its location, number one. And number two, their contracts are too rigid. They demand the restriction on the destination. The LNG imported from Qatar can only go to Japan and cannot go to anywhere else. But since we are facing uncertainties for the future demand for LNG, we need to have flexibility that if we come with a lower demand outcome for LNG, we would have to be able to sell the excess LNG somewhere else. So for that flexibility, we don’t want the rigidness of the contract that Qatar is demanding as of now. So that would lead us to North American LNG, both US and Canada. Canada and Canada. So we have a strong interest in importing LNG from North America as a potentially good option.
Bill Loveless: And there’s various options there, correct, both in the United States and in Canada.
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, within North America, there are several choices. One is to get the traditional one, conventional one is to get LNG from the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America. That remains to be the first option. The challenge is that as of now, the vessels have been going through the Panama canal, but recently with the water level occasionally becoming too low, the LNG vessels may not be able to go through the Panama canal. So they would have to make that long voyage via the Cape of Good Hope. And going through the South China Sea makes it much
Bill Loveless: More expensive.
Tatsuya Terazawa: More expansive and a larger carbon footprint and facing some geopolitical risk. So that’s if you have pros and cons, the cons of LNG coming from the Gulf. The next option, which could be interesting, is to have natural gas from Texas or Oklahoma or other states, the lower 48, and send those natural gas across Mexico and have the LNG exporting facilities on the Pacific side of Mexico. So natural gas is coming from the US but it’ll be exported from the Pacific side of Mexico, so it doesn’t have to go through the Panama Canal, which is an interesting option. And actually next year, the first cargo of LNG will be coming from the Mexican side, the Pacific side of Mexico. The third option would be natural gas or LNG coming from Canada from the state of British Columbia. The first LNG vessel, the first from Canada, is coming to Japan this summer. So finally we are having LNG from there, which is also a good option because the voyage is much shorter. It doesn’t have to go through the Panama Canal. The final option will be Alaska LNG. It has the shortest distance in terms of voyage, but it has to construct a very long pipeline like 800 miles, which will be very expensive. And in order for the timeframe, it is not that predictable because of the expected legal challenges from various parties. And so those being expensive and unpredictable those are the cons from the Alaska LNG.
Bill Loveless: Yeah, I have to say, I for many years was an energy reporter in Washington DC and I can remember as far back as the 1980s there was talk of building an Alaskan natural gas pipeline. And decades later that still hasn’t happened yet. Nevertheless, there has been more talk about that lately. At the CERAWeek meeting in Houston recently, that was a big topic, the prospect of Japan buying LNG from Alaska. I’ve even seen headlines recently in the press saying Japan considers backing Alaska LNG as a part of a US trade deal. Another headline said Mitsubishi may consider investing in Alaska LNG frowning a bit maybe.
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, there’s so many speculations and there are people feeding in their views into the press. So with due respect to your background as a reporter, I think it’ll be wrong to believe in everything that is reported. We are aware that there is a strong interest, especially from the people, our friends in Alaska, to push the Alaska LNG for natural reasons, but for commercial reasons, the Alaska LNG does have challenges.
Bill Loveless: I found it interesting. In the new strategic energy plan or your discussion of it, I should say, some talking points you’ve made recently on it, you talk about unleashing Asia demand is important to support large projects, it’s important for Japan as well as other countries in the Southeast Asia region. Explain what you mean by that.
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, for the new demand for Japan for long-term contracts, it is limited within the gap between our robust demand and the expiring of the existing long-term contracts. So it is significant but not growing. That’s for Japan. And for Korea, probably the same situation. The growth of the demand for LNG will come from Southeast Asia and South Asia. So to support large projects, any new LNG projects will require substantial demand. And Japan alone, it’ll be more difficult for us to have the substantial demand to justify large LNG projects. So we have to work together with our friends in Asia to aggregate demand to justify large LNG projects. And that is the reason why we have to unleash the potential for LNG demand in Southeast Asia and South Asia. But the problem is that financing is not available. There have been many impediments put into place against providing financing to fossil fuel related projects, including LNG projects. And that is something that we have to deal with to unleash the demand from Southeast Asia and South Asia.
Bill Loveless: And of course, China’s demand for LNG is expected to only increase going forward. Japan, as is the case with other countries, are in competition for what supplies exist. How does China’s demand present potential obstacles — or does it — to LNG’s, to Japan’s finding sufficient supplies of LNG?
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, actually, we can find suppliers. There are many, many pending projects including from the Mexico Gulf of America, and we have other potential suppliers from Australia and also the Middle East and even from East Africa. So we are not necessarily short of suppliers. So it’s not like we are in competition vis-a-vis China to get the very rare supply of LNG. That’s not necessarily the case. So we don’t consider China’s demand to be something as a challenge toward Japan.
Bill Loveless: I want to get back to nuclear power. You mentioned before the significance, the importance of nuclear power again to Japan. Following the accident at Fukushima 14 years ago. You talk of the need to build new reactors. Remind us of what happened to the nation’s nuclear power fleet following the disaster and where it stands today?
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, at the time of the Fukushima nuclear accident, which took place in 2011, March 11th, at the time we had 57 nuclear reactors in operation. But among that 57, 3 were planned to be retired. And in addition, that’s 57, we had three nuclear reactors under construction. So putting together, we had 60 nuclear reactors available, so to speak, in Japan at the time of the nuclear accident. After the accident, we had to stop all the nuclear reactors for the public sentiment and also the safety assurance. It has taken so much time, but now we have been successful in restarting 14 nuclear reactors. Some can argue that it is an achievement, others may argue it’s still that low, but we have made that progress. So we have 14 nuclear reactors in operation, but, and we have decided to retire 24 nuclear reactors, including three that had already been decided to be retired at the time of the Fukushima nuclear accident.
So doing the math, we have 19 nuclear reactors which are waiting to be restarted and three nuclear reactors that are waiting to be completed. So putting together, we have 22 nuclear reactors, which has a potential to be restarted or completed. And that is, I think, a great asset for Japan accidentally, so to speak, that one, many, many data centers or big tech companies are searching for zero carbon power in a short period of time. Japan has that potential, theoretically max of 22 nuclear reactors that can be restarted or completed in a fairly short period of time, which will be able to provide the non-zero carbon power in scale.
Bill Loveless: Yeah, and there is the public support for nuclear power today, public support that began to dwindle following or plummet following the accident?
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, after the accident it was terrible, but I think after 14 years with the establishment of a new independent nuclear regulatory agency, we call it NRA, being super tough. I think the confidence among the public towards the safety of nuclear has been restored, number one and number two, facing the increase in the cost of energy following the invasion of Ukraine. The people in Japan are demanding lower energy costs, and one of the simplest ways is to restart the existing nuclear power plants so people can understand that if you have nuclear reactors sitting there idle, the best way to reduce the cost is to restart them. So I think with restored confidence in the safety and also feeling the necessity, in order to lower the cost, we need to have the restart of nuclear reactors. So for the restart of nuclear reactors, I think there is a very strong support nationally, but we have to get the local support as well. And one of the reasons that we still have only 14 nuclear reactors in operation is that in some regions, it has been more difficult to get the consent locally. So it’s a national acceptance, but also a local acceptance as well.
Bill Loveless: And given the recovery that’s taken place in nuclear power in Japan recently, it’s obvious there’s the financing as well to pay for these restarts as well as for the new reactors.
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, that’s a challenge. And in the good old days, we had a very regulated market. There was a guaranteed return, so it was easy to make long-term investment, but we have entered into market reform. The power sector is now facing competition, so it has become more difficult to engage in long-term large scale investment. And that led to the one reason why we had a near blackout in 2022 with a shortage of power. So the government of Japan has changed its policy while still keeping competition in place. We have put into place a new system to sort of provide a guarantee for the recovery of CapEx for large scale low carbon power sources. That would include the safety investment for nuclear reactors to be restarted. Because to restart nuclear reactors, you have to strengthen the safety measures and the investment must be recovered. So the system of guaranteeing a return for their CapEx will be helping companies, power companies to make the investment for the restart of nuclear reactors. Having said so, building new nuclear power plants will be more challenging, and now the government of Japan is engaged in discussion whether the guarantee for the CapEx is good enough as incentives for the power companies to invest in new nuclear power plants. And this is something probably there has to be more policy strengthening to enable investment in new nuclear power plants.
Bill Loveless: We discussed the shift that is taking place under the new strategic energy plan, one where energy security will receive greater emphasis and a different attitude when it comes to reducing emissions. The goal of greenhouse gas reduction or emissions in 2040 is 73% compared with 2013. Is that goal different than the one under the current strategic plan? No,
Tatsuya Terazawa: The 73% reduction is exactly to put us on the path towards carbon neutrality in 2050. So that hasn’t changed. That hasn’t changed. The only difference is that the previous strategic plan had the target year of 2035. The reduction for 2030 was a 46% reduction, and the 73% figure you mentioned is for 2040, and for your reference for 2035, the goal for GHG reduction will be 60%. So these 46%, 60%, 73% are all on the line to put us on the pathway towards carbon neutrality in 2050.
Bill Loveless: Okay, so that hasn’t changed yet at
Tatsuya Terazawa: All changed. But the only difference or the big difference is that we have a plan B based on plan B. We’ll not be on the pathway if we don’t have the deployment of technology that as renewable energy or hydrogen or CCS at the desired level.
Bill Loveless: Yeah, much more flexibility than has been shown in the past.
Tatsuya Terazawa: The reason is that we have a strong pledge and aspiration to reduce CO2 emission or GHG emission, but also we have to make sure that we have sufficient energy to meet the demand of our people and our industry. And we cannot tell our people that just because we fail to deploy new technology as much as we desire and tell our people in our industry that sorry, we don’t have enough energy, that is something that is not acceptable. We are having plan B to ensure that we have sufficient energy in place. One of the big pillar of that energy will be LNG, so we’ll ensure that we have long-term contracts for LNG, so that we will have sufficient LNG supply to be ready if we have to face the plan B.
Bill Loveless: Before we go, I want to touch on something that’s newsworthy, particularly newsworthy at the moment. And of course, you and I are speaking on April 9th outside the center’s Global Energy Summit here in New York City, but much in the headlines is the market turbulence. We’re seeing global market turbulence in all sectors amid the Trump administration’s tariff plans. We’re all trying to sort out what’s going on now and who knows what will happen between now and when we air our discussion. But what are you thinking these days regarding this turmoil and its potential implications for energy markets?
Tatsuya Terazawa: I don’t have a crystal ball to tell what may be the situation when this podcast is aired, but a few things are clear. One, when we talk about energy security these days, we’re talking about energy security including critical minerals, and for having a resilient supply chain for critical minerals. No single country, with the exception of China, can have a resilient supply chain, and you need to work with like-minded countries for mining and also for processing critical minerals. So the tariffs announcement as of today will make the partnership of those countries necessary for the supply chain of critical minerals to be more difficult to develop. As I said at the session today here at the Columbia Global Energy Summit, America first is fine, but America alone will not be a solution to develop a resilient supply chain for critical minerals. That’s quite clear. Number two, president Trump is demanding that the trade deficit is a problem. And certainly that’s something that people can argue, but at least that is his strong belief and it appears that addressing the trade surplus or trade deficit will be the essential element for a deal. In that regard, Japan, since Japan is running a trade surplus with the US, would have to buy more from the US. And one of the likely things that we can buy is energy. And when we talk about energy, that’ll be most likely energy. So I expect there’ll be an even greater emphasis for LNG procurement from the US.
Bill Loveless: You had some concerns today as well regarding steps Europe has taken with its carbon border adjustment mechanism that plans by the EU to place fees on carbon intensive imports. As of next January, tell our listeners what your concerns are with that.
Tatsuya Terazawa: I raised three problems with CBAM. One is that it will have a tremendous impact on trade, and I come from Asia, and Asia has been growing through the expansion of trade. So the impact on trade, because CBAM puts a de facto tariff on the exports or imports of those products, that will have an impact on the trade. So it is a matter of concern for Japan and our Asian partners. And the problem is that when the CBAM was first proposed, it started with five sectors, but now it’s being expanded to a larger group of sectors. And now the downstream products of steel, including screws and bolts, are now subject to CBAM. To be totally honest, I’m not quite sure to what extent screws and bolts would have an impact on global climate change. Theoretically, as long as any product generates CO2 in the process of its manufacturing, those projects could be subject to CBAM.
So it has the potential to proliferate to cover many more products and sectors. And it’s not just EU. Many other countries are trying to incorporate or introduce something similar to CBAM. The UK already has a UK based CBAM scheduled to be implemented, and Australia is now considering similar things. So proliferation in terms of products, sectors, proliferation in terms of countries putting into place CBAM, like measures is expanding. And compared to the goal of WTO or GATT or of FTA, the ultimate goal is to realize a tariff free world eventually. Now, the CBAM and CBAM alike measures have a potential of introducing de-factor tariffs on many, many products by many countries. That’s number one. Number two is that CBAM only accepts explicit carbon pricing at EU’s price level, but many countries have very different means to reduce CO2, for example, US through IRA, if it still survives, the objective was to reduce CO2 emission through IRA, not through explicit carbon pricing. There may be countries introducing regulations to reduce CO2, and some countries may have hydropower to be able to produce products with low carbon intensity, but these will not be recognized under CBAM. EU CBAM necessitates explicit carbon pricing at its ETS level. So that’s also problematic, and it goes beyond the necessity to prevent carbon leakage.
Finally, there’s a development problem. Many emerging and developing countries would like to grow through expansion of trade, but CBAM does not give any exception. Even countries with modest levels of export will be subject to CBAM. And I understand in the recent Davos meetings, people from the global south were criticizing CBAM for imposing upon them the EU ETS carbon price level on them for the problem that they are not responsible for. So for the G20, some meeting this year hosted by South Africa, I think this will be one of the issues to be discussed. So I’m not necessarily denying the need for having CBAM-like measures to deal with carbon leakage, but it has to be balanced against the legitimate necessity to expand international trade and the legitimate aspiration to realize growth through trade. So it is time to have a discussion, a global discussion, to find its right balance among those three.
Bill Loveless: So much potential for disarray in global energy markets, certainly over the next year or so. But just as important is observing the needs of various countries, in this case, Japan as it embarks on an entirely new energy strategy for the coming years. Tatsuya Terazawa, thank you very much for joining us on Columbia Energy Exchange.
Tatsuya Terazawa: Well, thank you very much. It was my great pleasure.
Bill Loveless: That’s it for this week’s episode of Columbia Energy Exchange. Thank you again, Tatsuya Terazawa, and thank you for listening. The show is brought to you by the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. The show is hosted by Jason Bordoff and me, Bill Loveless. The show is produced by Mary Catherine O’Connor from Latitude Studios. Additional support from Caroline Pitman and Kyu Lee. Sean Marquand is the sound engineer. For more information about the show or the Center on Global Energy Policy, visit us online at energypolicy.columbia.edu or follow us on social media @ColumbiaUEnergy. If you like this episode, leave us a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can also share it with a friend or colleague to help us reach more listeners. Either way. We appreciate your support. Thanks again for listening. See you next week.
