NB: The following paper was
presented by Professor K. Kaneko at the Tokyo International Forum: “Energy
Security and Environment: The Role of Nuclear Power” (Tokyo, July 8, 2002)
Asian Energy Security and Nuclear Power
It is generally agreed that Asia is the region where the biggest economic growth is expected in the 21st century and the largest amount of energy will be needed to sustain that growth. Thus, Asia is looming an increasingly serious factor in all forecasts concerning global energy security and environmental problems.
First, let us
focus on China, a country with the world’s largest population. China's
main source of energy is coal which constitutes about 80 % of the country's
primary energy consumption. In order to
sustain an incredible speed of her industrialization, immense amounts of
coal are being burnt every day, emitting a tremendous quantity of exhaust
fumes; an estimate tells us that within the next twenty years, CO2 emissions in
China will overtake those of the United States. The prevailing westerlies
would eventually cause serious acid rainfalls in the Japanese Archipelago and
Korean Peninsula.
Even more serious than the
environmental issue, however, will be the energy situation. While China's
industrialization is concentrated in the coastal regions, the coal is mined far
away from the coast in the north and central Chinese regions. As the
result, an immense amount of money and time has to be spent on the
transportation of coals in China. Under
such circumstance, China began a large-scale shift from coal to oil from the
beginning of the 90s. Although China
now is the 7th largest oil producing nation in the world, her domestic oil
supply has hardly kept up with the growing demand. As the result, China started importing large quantities of oil
from the Middle East, having become a net oil importer in 1995.
Likewise, Indonesia, the
largest oil producing nation in Asia, has not been able to meet her internal
energy requirements solely by domestic oil, and has recently begun increasing
the quantity of imported oil from the Middle East. It is expected that the country will become a net oil importer
within the next several years.
Consequently, Asian nations, with the
exception of Malaysia and Brunei, will come, sooner or later, to engage
themselves in a fierce scramble for Middle East oil, thereby increasing the
risks of regional conflicts and confrontations. Keeping this prospect in mind,
China and many of the Southeast Asian countries have turned their attention to
the off-shore oil and natural gas in the South China Sea. They are fast
prospecting and developing their production in the region. As a result, the
struggle for the possession of the Spratlys and Paracels Islands has been
increasing in intensity. If the situation
escalates even further and develops into military confrontations, the peace and
security of the whole of Southeast Asia will be at jeopardy.
As many oil and LNG tankers
destined for Japan, Korea and Taiwan pass through this sea area, in such a
critical situation serious consequences will be unavoidable for these nations,
too. In the Malacca Straits, the main
passage route for tankers bound for Japan, in addition to frequent collisions
and shipwrecks, piracy is rampant in recent years. Safe passage through the Straits has thus become a serious
concern for the energy security of Japan and Korea.
As seen above, throughout Asia
there are many areas that can endanger the
assured access to energy resources.
Under the circumstances, there clearly exists an urgent need to
strengthen preventive mechanisms, such as a regional oil stockpiling system or
an emergency mutual assistance scheme, in preparation for a large-scale energy
crisis due to the disruption of oil supplies. Simultaneously, there is a clear need to conserve or decrease the
use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, and to increase the development of
renewable natural energy such as solar, wind, geothermal and bio- mass.
As a technologically advanced
country, Japan should take more leadership in these
areas. In January 2002, Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi came up with a plan for regional cooperation to
strengthen energy security in Asia in his policy speech in Singapore, which
was entitled "Japan and ASEAN in East Asia: In Search of Sincere and
Open Partnership". It is strongly
hoped that this proposal would materialize as soon as possible.
There emerges a growing interest
in nuclear energy among some of Asian countries as a viable alternative to
fossil fuels. Already in Northeast Asia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan are
generating substantial electricity from nuclear power plants; the ratio of
nuclear generated electricity in the total amount of generated electricity is
35 % for Japan, 41 % for Korea and 24 % for Taiwan respectively. China has also started constructing nuclear
power plants at a rapid pace, although at the moment
only 1 % of the total energy generation in China comes from nuclear energy.
Furthermore, in the past several
years, a few countries in Southeast Asia have
also begun to consider the possibility of introducing nuclear energy. Among these countries, in particular,
Vietnam has been asking Japan for technical and financial help for nuclear
power generation. In the past, the
Japanese government was reluctant to provide such assistance in this
area. There is a clear need for Japan to respond more positively to such
requests, as in the increasingly interdependent world of today it
is evident that the peace and security can no longer be assured for Japan
alone regardless of the regional peace and security as a whole.
Nuclear energy must be considered
more importantly in Asia not only from the
viewpoint of energy security but also from the viewpoint of global
environmental protection since it does not emit CO2. If, in addition to Japan, Korea and Taiwan already engaged in
nuclear power, populous countries like China, India and Indonesia generate
required electricity more from nuclear power, thereby decreasing the
consumption of fossil fuels, the regional and global balance of energy demand
and supply will be alleviated significantly.
More nuclear power generation in Asia will certainly help lessen the
deterioration of the global environment, particularly, global warming.