Kamikatsu: Japan’s First Zero-waste Town?

Beyond looking like we’re working, that video player is just plain broken…

I can hear it start playing but I see nothing and have no buttons.

This is only from Wikipedia, but the “Geothermal energy generation in Japan” section of the Japanese Wikipedia article on “Geothermal Energy” says the following.

地熱発電
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%B0%E7%86%B1%E7%99%BA%E9%9B%BB

日本は火山が多く地熱開発の技術水準も高いが、地熱発電の総容量はおよそ561MWで世界第5位である。また、国内発電能力の1%にも満たない。日本で地熱発電が積極的に推進されにくい理由は、地域住民の反対や法律上の規制があるためである。 つまり、候補地となりうる場所の多くが国立公園や国定公園に指定されていたり、温泉観光地となっていたりするため、景観を損なう発電所建設に理解を得にくいこと、温泉への影響に対する懸念があること、国立公園等の開発に関する規制があることなどである。 例えば、群馬県の嬬恋村では、現在地熱発電の計画が浮上しているが、その予定地が草津温泉の源泉から数kmしか離れていないため、温泉に影響が出る可能性があるとして草津町が反対している。

Japan has many volcanoes and a high level of geothermal development technology, but the gross sum of electricity generated from geothermal energy is approximately 561 MW, ranking 5th in the world. Also, this accounts for less than 1% of domestic electrical energy generation. The reason why geothermal power generation is difficult to pursue actively in Japan is due to resistance from local residents and legal restrictions. Basically, many candidate locations are designated as national parks or quasi-national parks, or are hot springs tourist destinations, so there are difficulties in obtaining agreement to build generation facilities which may spoil the scenery, concerns of effects on the hot springs, and legal restrictions concerning developing national parks. For example in the Tsumakoi village of the Gunma prefecture, plans for a geothermal plant are being proposed, but the site is only a few kilometers away from the origins of the Kusatsu Hot Springs, so the city of Kusatsu is opposing the plans citing concerns of affecting the hot springs.

The article does also mention hot dry rock geothermal power (HDR) as a promising and reasonably matured alternative tech that doesn’t compete for use of underwater water resources. A new geothermal plant for the first time in 20 years is “to be built in January of 2009″, so I wonder how that panned out.