With respect to the management of local public corporations, there are many problems, including a generally lower business efficiency compared with private companies and the constant dependence on subsidies from local governments. Meanwhile, local governments are implementing various measures to...

Among present Japanese Greenhouse Gas Emission quantification methodologies, the methodology for Limestone and Dolomite origin carbon dioxide quantification is pointed out that there may be some duplication, oversight and over estimation due to the methodology mixes both industrial and...

In the 1990s, a series of changes were made to policies and regulations governing electricity and town gas supply industries in Japan. To evaluate how such regulatory changes, channeled through the behavior of power/gas companies, have affected the economic welfare of the electricity and town...

The reform of electric industry regulations implemented in fiscal 2000 partially liberalized the power retail market, allowing power suppliers to sell electricity to certain large-lot users beyond their conventional service areas. To this day, however, hardly any systematic analysis has been...

Renewable electricity, which has its energy source in renewable energy, is of great importance as a measure for addressing issues such as energy security, socioeconomic sustainability, and climate change; and the effective promotion of its introduction is a major issue in energy and environmental...

Regional economic trends by prefecture over the last thirty years in Japan show broad disparities in changes in population and income levels. These changes are understood to be closely linked to the industrial structures of each prefecture and their individual development. In contrast, the...

Today's household electricity rates system generally adopts a three-stage rates system. Under this system, rates for small levels of consumption are low, to serve as a social policy that reduces the burden on the lower income class, and rates for large levels of consumption are high, to reflect...

Nuclear power is a very important source of energy in Japan, with 53 reactors currently in operation and together accounting for about 25% of total power supply in the country. In recent years, however, the average operating rates of those reactors have been lowered to the 60% level due to a...

The Japanese steel industry accounts for 10% of Japan's energy consumption, and therefore the success or failure of that industry's energy conservation measures is of the greatest importance in any discussion of energy and environmental issues, including global climate change issues. This paper...

In the Japanese town gas industry, a series of partial liberalization measures and other regulation changes have been carried out since the second half of the 1990s with the aim of maintaining and expanding economic welfare and reducing prices through the promotion of competition. Nevertheless,...