Japanese Consumer Co-ops' Climate Change Measures for a Sustainable Society

2020.02.18

Japanese consumer co-ops have the vision of "Creating a more human lifestyle and sustainable society" and promote businesses that place value on the sustainability of communities and global environments. Here we introduce the Climate change measures of Japanese consumer co-ops.

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Climate change measures

Japanese consumer co-ops have been aware of the global warming problems since the 1990s and worked on measures such as energy-saving with co-op members. Since 2004, Japanese consumer co-ops have voluntarily established CO2 reduction plans and have worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their businesses. Since 2012, they have established the goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 15% compared to 2005, by 2020. They have actively worked on the use of renewable energy as well as on energy saving. At present, they are working to formulate reduction plans and strengthening initiatives to achieve the targets of 40% reduction in 2030 and 90% reduction in 2050 compared to 2013.

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The use and development of renewable energy

Following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, Japanese consumer co-ops reviewed energy policy. JCCU recommended to the Japanese Government not to rely on nuclear power and to rapidly expand renewable energy use.

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In addition to the recommendations, Japanese consumer co-ops have worked on the use and development of renewable energy. They aim to increase the installed capacity of renewable electricity up to 100MV by 2020. Today, they have generators with the capacity of 98MW that can produce 180 million kWh of electricity per year as of December 2019.

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Japanese consumer co-ops aim to cover the total amount of electricity used by them with renewable energy in the near future. 

tags: renewable energy, the Climate change measures