Japan has just raised its 2030 emissions reduction target from 26% to 46% below 2013 levels. When the country's environment minister was asked how the new figure was arrived at, he said the number 46 appeared to him as a "silhouette" in a sort of vision. Willie Eschenbach uses this example of lemming-like behaviour to calculate what keeping the minister's promise would entail. Wind and solar must be excluded — they are expensive, intermittent, and unreliable, and are largely precluded by Japan's geography. This means switching from burning fossil fuels to nuclear power for heating and transportation, as well as upsizing the entire electrical grid. Finally, Japan would have to commission a brand-new 1.6 GW nuclear plant every two weeks from now to 2030. Each of the six reactors at the ill-fated Fukushima plant was only 0.8 GW.

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https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/02/japan-joins-the-lemmings/

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