Japan puts clean -tech dazzle on display at G8 summit, but can it lead?

JAPAN PUTS CLEAN-TECH DAZZLE ON DISPLAY AT G8 SUMMIT, BUT CAN IT LEAD?

When Japan offered to host this year's G8 summit, that entailed taking leadership as the world addresses the threat of climate change.

On Monday, the opening day of the 7 to 9 July summit, debate centred on world hunger, and on Tuesday the focus shifted to climate change. Here is where Japan will - or will not - prove its mettle.

On Tuesday, Japanese Premier Yasuo Fukuda could boast that G8 members had pledged to meet the ambitious goal of at least halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – a slight firming up of the Heiligedamm G8's promise in 2007 to "seriously consider" such a goal.

And according to Nikkei Business Online, G8 members agreed in a joint communiqué that emerging nations must shoulder part of the burden of emission cuts, in an apparent nod to Washington's reluctance to agree to hard reduction targets without commitments also by China and India.

Meanwhile, just as headline grabbing as any policy pronouncements from within the walls of the G8 venue at Toyako on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, were what was parked outside: a small armada of low- and zero-emission automobiles.

Japan's automakers have used the summit to demonstrate that Japan can muster its enormous technical prowess to cut carbon emissions around the world. Some 119 high clean clean vehicles of over a dozen prototype models were rolled out in Toyako before being shown to visiting press and dignitaries.

Nissan showcased its X-trail clean diesel car designed to meet tougher emissions regulations late next year. And environmentalists around the world were most impressed by Fuji Heavy Industry's fully electric Subaru Plug-in Stella concept model and Mitsubishi Motors' counterpart, the i MiEV.

But as clearly as those cars may have signalled the transport sector's first steps away from fossil-fuel dependency, midway through the three-day G8 affair Japan's influence in tackling global climate change was far less visible.

Read full article on the New Energy Finance week in review

Source: New Energy Finance week in review