Opportunities beyond the Australian Energy White Paper

by Samantha Mella and Geoff James 8 June 2015 I. Introduction Samantha Mella and Geoff James write “The (Australian Energy) White Paper’s framework of competition, productivity and investment provides a good platform for discussion, but a number of important issues are not addressed. These include the development of Australia’s abundant renewable energy resources, the consideration […]

An Emerging Fukushima Model?

Andrew Dewit discusses Japan’s plans to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm near Fukushima as part of plans to reconstruct the area stricken by nuclear disaster in 2011. He writes “that if one looks closely at Fukushima, as well as Japan’s subnational governments in general, one finds plenty of political will and concrete action. This comes as something of a surprise, to be frank, as the general narrative on Japan and its power holders has been that the dominance of the nuclear-favouring Abe regime means the decline of the pro-renewable and anti-nuclear movement spawned by Fukushima. The evidence suggests, however, that Japanese power policy and politics is becoming decentralized and distributed.”

Andrew Dewit is Professor in the School of Policy Studies at Rikkyo University and an Asia-Pacific Journal coordinator.