IEA calls on Japan to clarify gas goals

Gas companies need greater certainty about the fuel’s long-term outlook

Japan should clarify the role of gas in its decarbonisation plans for this decade, the IEA recommends in its Japan 2021, Energy Policy Review. The international body also recommends that Japan should refit its planned supercritical coal-fired power plants to burn gas instead, and that Japanese authorities take further measures to liberalise the domestic market. The “long-term outlook for natural gas demand in Japan is unclear”, the IEA says. The country’s Long-term Energy Supply and Demand Outlook to 2030 projects gas demand as declining by 2030 back to the levels seen before the Fukushima disaster, which saw nuclear capacity shut in its wake. “[The] long-term outlook for natural gas d