Japan's electricity administration has always been the target of those who support green energy. Summing up all the recent events such as the Fukushima incident and Abe's proposal to reactivate the Power Plants things don't look much better.
Japan's Electricity Consumption
First, I think it is worth mentioning that Japan is one of the most energy efficient countries of the world. Japan has roughly 127 million inhabitants and uses every year 860,000,000 Watt/hour. The United States has roughly 310 million inhabitants and uses every year 4,600,000,000 Watt/hour. The United States consumes almost 8 times what Japan consumes with a little more than twice the population of Japan.
Japan's Power Plants
Japan has a problem with an Electricity Monopoly and relies on power plants as their energy supply. But not just Power Plants.
Power Plants: 27%
Coal: 26%
Gas: 27%
Oil: 8%
Hydro: 8%
Other: 4%
Japan uses Power Plants but they don't want to use them. The main concern is that Nuclear Plants cannot resist seismic activity. This is a major minus in a seismic country. The Fukushima incident showed exactly how problematic this is. By 2012, all nuclear power plants were shut down but in 2013 some were activated again. In 2014, even more power plants were activated.
Green Electricity
This almost absent energy exists but not in abundance. As you read earlier, about 8% of Japan's energy is green energy. This is good but too little.
The government introduced the feed-in-tariff system in July 2012. This system says that major power companies have to buy all the electricity generated by solar, wind, geothermal and medium-to-small-scale hydro-power sources and biomass at fixed prices. This was Japan's approach to generate 20% of its electricity by green electricity.
A few weeks ago, some companies stopped purchasing green electricity in Japan for two reasons: price and stability. The purchase cost of green electricity is added to the electricity charges (higher bills). At the same time, the companies argue that depending too much on green electricity might destabilize the stable supply of electricity.
The government is now thinking about a way to boost renewable electricity in Japan.