Japan is an island country in East Asia. The country has a total of 6,852 islands extending along the Pacific coast. As of 2018, Japan's territory covers 377,973.89 km2 . It is the largest island country in East Asia and its capital is Tokyo. Japanese is the official language in the country.
About 73% of Japan is forested, mountainous and unsuitable for agricultural, industrial or residential use. As a result, the habitable zones, mainly located in coastal areas, have extremely high population densities with a population of 126.8 million in 2017. Japan is substantially prone to earthquakes, tsunami and volcanoes due to its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Japan is the third largest national economy in the world and is highly developed. The country’s main imports are machinery and equipment, fossil fuels, foodstuffs, chemicals, textiles and raw materials for its industries. Its role in the international community is considerable being a major aid donor and a source of global capital and credit.
Resource-poor Japan is dependent on imports for more than 90% of its energy, which affects its energy security. Prior to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident, power generation was dominated by fossil fuels (60%) and nuclear (30%). Post the accident, a big increase in fossil fuel imports for thermal generation has lead to Increasing electricity prices, a high dependency on imports, and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
Japan is looking to expand its renewable energy use to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels and secure energy supply. Solar power in Japan has been expanding since the late 1990s. The country is a leading manufacturer of photovoltaic and a large installer of domestic PV systems with most of them connected to the grid. Japan has an insolation of about 4.3 to 4.8 kWh/(m2·day). By 2030 Solar PV is expected to comprise 33% of generation from renewables and attract 62% of government incentives for renewable generation. In 2018, the government adopted a new basic energy plan, which calls for generating 22-24% of the country’s electricity by renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, 20-22% by nuclear power and 56% by thermal power in 2030.
To combat the lack of land available for solar farming, Japan has also built the world’s first floating solar plant in Aichi Prefecture in central Honshu. The country’s many inland lakes and reservoirs house 73 of the world's 100 largest floating solar plants and account for half of those plants’ 246 MW of solar capacity. Many of these plants are small-scale and are helping kickstart distributed power generation.
Fiscal incentives include feed-in-tariffs for solar and other renewable energies since 2012. The FIT scheme requires electric power companies to purchase electricity produced by firms and households using solar power, wind power and other renewable energy sources at fixed rates for long periods.