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15th IAEE European Conference 2017 in Vienna

Motivational aspects of

energy transitions in JapanSome empirical findings

September 6, 2017

Hidetoshi YAMASHITAHitotsubashi University, Japan

Shinichiro OKUSHIMAUniversity of Tsukuba, Japan

Municipalities’ role in energy transitions

Based on the informative examples like in Germany (e.g., Engelken et al., 2016),

Austria (e.g., Schmidt et al., 2012) or

Switzerland (e.g., Müller et al., 2011),

It is well known that municipalities

play a significant role in energy transitions.

These studies show that motivation and performance of municipal governments

are quite essential to realize locally-initiated energy

transitions, and that

there are large varieties of objectives and benefits

municipalities pursue.

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Municipalities’ role in energy transitions

Motivational aspect Literatures based on European experiences show that

economic benefits are not sole reason for communities to

invest in renewable energy.

Arentsen and Bellekom (2014) The majority of the motivations of communities can be

categorized into four types: environmental, economic,

dissatisfaction with government effectiveness, and social.

Nonetheless, little empirical literature on this topic

exists in Japan, as well as even in European

countries (Engelken et al., 2016; Müller et al., 2011).

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Purpose and Methods

BackgroundConducted a questionnaire survey in 2014

Target : All of the 1,741 Japanese municipalities

Response rate : 78.8% (1,372 municipalities)

Purpose of this study is to specify the characteristics of municipalities which

encourage renewable energies

By means of Correspondence analysis

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Encouragement of the use of RE

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744

242

80

194

7141

We encourage their use under written guidelines such as ordinances, plans, targets, or new energy visions.

No written guidelines, but we implement policies to encourage use.

No written guidelines and no policy, but we show a stance of encouraging use through local government head statements and declarations of position.

Currently not encouraging use, but might consider doing so in the future.

Currently not encouraging use, no possibility of considering it in the future.

No response.

Renewables encouraging municipalities: REMs

Reasons for encouraging the use of RE

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358323

13737

106218

734843

45278

283117

8949

2283

607169

5518

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700

R will invigorate the local community.

R will make effective use of idle land and local resources.

R will increase local employment.

R will halt local population decrease.

R offer promise of revenues from property taxes, and other sources.

R help improve people’s impression of our locality.

R offer promise of increased inspection tours and tourism.

R will accumulate expertise and experience for business development.

R will attract and foster renewable energy equipment makers.

R will bring about local consumption of locally produced energy .

R offer promise of earnings from Feed-in tariffs.

R make possible a more robust response to disasters and other risks.

Local government heads show positive leadership.

Local citizens and businesses are positive about R.

Outside businesses actively encourage commercial projects.

Nearby municipalities are actively pursuing R.

The prefecture is actively pursuing R.

R help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

R help raise the nation’s energy self-sufficiency rate.

R help phase out nuclear power.

Other.

invigorateresource-useemployment

populationrevenue

impressiontourism

expertisemakerlocal-s

disaster

climatenational-s

de-nuclearN=744, multiple responses

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Categories: reasons

Respondents: municipalities

Correspondence analysis

Correspondence analysis is a sort of multivariateanalysis.Mathematically, it calculates coordinates of categories and

respondents in order to minimize the sum of the length ofthe segments which connect categories and respondents.

Correspondence analysis plots two categories which are selected simultaneously by many respondents close to each other.

Categories with few responses appear in the periphery of the scatter plots, while categories withmany responses tend to be located around the origin. see Hayashi (1952) for detail

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Categories: reasons

Respondents: municipalities

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Concusions

Motivations of REMs can be categorized into

three types by correspondence analysis:

environmental,

socio-economic, and

concern on national energy policy. social and economic motivation may be weakly separable.

Results agree with the insights from other countries.

REMs with socio-economic motivation are to be core

exponents of “locally initiated energy transition”. In order to increase them, we need to make REMs with

other motivation turn to have this motivation, non-REMs

with renewables potentials turn to be REMs.

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References

Arentsen, M., Bellekom, S. (2014), “Power to the people: local energy initiatives as

seedbeds of innovation?”, Energy, Sustainability and Society, 4:2.

Engelken, M., Römer, B., Drescher, M., Welpe, I. (2016), “Transforming the energy

system: Why municipalities strive for energy self-sufficiency,” Energy Policy, 98,

pp. 365-377.

Hayashi, C. (1952), “On the prediction of phenomena from qualitative data and the

quantification of qualitative data from the mathematico-statistical point of view”,

Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 3, pp. 69-98.

Müller, M.O., Stämpfli, A., Dold, U., Hammer, T. (2011), “Energy autarky: A

conceptual framework for sustainable regional development,” Energy Policy, 39,

pp. 5800-5810.

Schmidt, J. Schönhart, M., Biberacher, M., Guggenberger, T., Hausl, S., Kalt, G.,

Leduc, S., Schardinger, I., Schmid, E. (2012), “Regional energy autarky:

Potentials, costs and consequences for an Austrian region,” Energy Policy, 47, pp.

211-221.

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