Japan's emissions cuts to rely mainly on domestic efforts: minister+

TOKYO, Sept. 20 Kyodo -
Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa said Sunday that Japan will try to achieve
its new goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels
by 2020 mostly through domestic efforts.
In an interview with a group of news organizations, Ozawa also said Tokyo will
basically promote nuclear power generation as a way of helping implement the
fresh reduction target unveiled by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.
Before assuming the premiership, Hatoyama reaffirmed earlier this month his
Democratic Party of Japan's election pledge that Japan will aim to slash
heat-trapping gas emissions by 25 percent, a far more ambitious target than the
8 percent reduction goal set by former Prime Minister Taro Aso.
Ozawa made it clear in the interview that the DPJ-led government counts not
only emissions to be slashed by domestic efforts but also carbon dioxide to be
naturally absorbed by forests and cuts through the purchase of emission credits
from other countries. He said, however, the proportions of those measures have
not been set yet.
''The basic assumption is that Japan will trim as much as possible
domestically,'' the minister said. Forest absorption and the credit purchase
are considered to be supplementary tools for each country in striving to
mitigate global warming.
Even though the Social Democratic Party, one of the DPJ's coalition partners in
the new government, opposes nuclear power generation, Ozawa said nuclear power
provides a ''useful'' solution to climate change. ''Provided that enough
measures are taken to secure safety operations, we basically promote nuclear
power generation,'' he said.
The minister said he has instructed Environment Ministry officials to work out
a viable plan to realize the 25 percent cut goal and to come up with proposals
on necessary budgetary and taxation steps in a month or two.
The DPJ has pledged to seek an environment tax within four years and start a
mandatory cap-and-trade emissions trading system in fiscal 2011 in order to
tackle global warming.
Some DPJ members claim the government should scrap the current provisional
gasoline surcharge of some 25 yen per liter, and reinstate the duties
immediately afterward as green tax in fiscal 2010 starting next April.
Ozawa also said the government will need to submit a basic law on curbing
global warming during next year's ordinary Diet session to set a medium-term
policy for Japan to combat climate change.
The DPJ has presented its version of the basic law involving carbon tax and the
mandatory emissions trading system. In Japan, an experimental carbon credit
trading system was launched last October on a voluntary basis.
Ozawa reiterated that the participation of major greenhouse gas emitters such
as the United States, China and India in a post-2012 international framework on
curbing global warming will be ''inevitable'' and expressed his willingness to
visit China and India in the near future to discuss how to address climate
change.
Key U.N. climate negotiations will be held in December in Copenhagen to craft a
new international scheme to tackle global warming after the 1997 Kyoto Protocol
expires in 2012.
The minister is scheduled to attend a series of international meetings on
climate change in New York and Pittsburgh with Hatoyama from Tuesday. He is
arranging talks with chief U.S. climate change negotiator Todd Stern and
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on the sidelines of the meetings.
==Kyodo