Between June 2 and July 1, the subcommittee had made available a draft outlook formulated at the previous meeting so as to solicit comments from the public. Sorting the 2,060 comments received into 50 categories, the secretariat read drafts of responses at the meeting, proposing revisions to the outlook.
Among other things, it was decided to add the following statement to the outlook, given that some of the people had commented that Japan should essentially give up nuclear power, inasmuch as the Fukushima Daiichi accident of March 2011 is not yet completely under control:
“Activities to restore and reconstruct Fukushima are the starting point in rebuilding energy policy. The government’s top priority is to make full efforts in that direction, including (1) reactor decommissioning, (2) contaminated-water countermeasures, (3) nuclear damage compensation, (4) decontamination, (5) an interim storage facility project, and (6) measures to deal with unfounded fears and rumors. Those will all be carried out while the government does its best to restore public confidence.”
At the meeting, one of the committee members, Secretary-General Yasuko Kono of the National Liaison Committee of Consumers’ Organizations, stated, “The national government must strive to communicate with the public and support local municipalities as well as small-and-medium enterprises, as the thorough conservation of energy and the increasing use of renewal energies both require active public participation.”
Another member, CEO Hidetoshi Nakagami of the Jyukankyo Research Institute Inc. (JYURI), said, “Japan now needs to carry out more than double the level of energy conservation that it had achieved during the two oil crises of the 1970s, requiring the full cooperation of all sectors of the economy. Unlike the past two years, when the government’s long-term outlooks for energy supply and demand primarily called upon the industrial sector to save energy, the latest outlook will place a great burden on the residential sector. We thus need to include a message urging consumers to take action.”
Noting that “we are setting quite harsh target values,” Subcommittee Chairman Masahiro Sakane, councilor of Komatsu Ltd., emphasized that considerable effort will be required to achieve them.
