The subcommittee of the Electric Utility Industry Council has called for a lowering of the annual growth in electricity demand from a projected 2.1 per cent to 1.2 per cent per annum until 2010 in order to tackle power plant emissions and meet the targets set by the Kyoto conference to counter global warming.
The subcommittee stressed the need to tackle the emissions problem in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 63 million t by 2010, 9 per cent below 1990 levels. It also recommended that Japan rely more heavily on nuclear power, which it suggested should supply 45 per cent of demand in 2010 compared with 35 per cent at the end of the 1996 financial year.
