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| Rendered image of the Tokyo Main Olympic Stadium (under construction), equipped with solar and other renewable energy technology. Credit: Zaha Hadid Architects |
Tokyo, known as the world’s most populous metropolis, is the largest energy consumer in Japan, consuming 10 percent of the nation’s entire electricity supply.
Homes and businesses in Tokyo consumed about 80,000 GWh of electricity in 2012. According to Mizuho Bank, of the total electricity consumption only 6 percent was supplied by renewable energy. Furthermore, most of the renewable energy was supplied via hydropower plants located outside of Tokyo owned by Tokyo Power Electric Company (TEPCO), a regional investor-owned utility. This means that only 480 GWh of renewable energy was actually generated within Tokyo.
Because Tokyo doesn’t have much land space to deploy utility-scale solar and wind farms like other parts of Japan, its efforts are focused on distributed generation systems.
To increase renewable energy sources to 20 percent from 6 percent in 10 years, Tokyo has the following goals:
- Install a cumulative capacity of 1 GW of on-site solar photovoltaic (PV) systems by 2024.
- Install 22 MW of PV on metropolis-owned buildings and facilities by 2020.
- Install 600 MW of commercial-scale co-generation system capacity by 2024.
Tokyo Solar Roof Register to Support Rooftop Expansion
According to data released by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), Tokyo has approximately 137 MW of the reserved capacity for residential PV systems under the nation’s FIT program. This is equivalent to 4 percent of the nation’s total reserved capacity and makes Tokyo the No. 9 residential solar state in the nation.Read More Here