EIGHTY miles north-west of Fukushima’s hulking nuclear corpse, Yauemon Sato, a small businessman, has charged into the solar-power business. Mr Sato has rented land, hired a workforce and lined up ¥80m ($6.8m) in capital from local investors and banks. His company says it can produce electricity for about 700 households. But the local power utility is refusing to buy more than a quarter of it.Japan set one of the world’s highest tariffs for renewable energy in 2012, as part of a bid to live without atomic power following the Fukushima disaster. Electricity companies were ordered to pay ¥42 a kilowatt-hour (kWh) to novice producers like Mr Sato. The promise of such a high guaranteed price triggered more than 1.2m applications, mostly for solar-power installations. Japan’s power utilities say they are overwhelmed and have revolted. Most have begun blocking access to the transmission grid.Kyushu Electric, which supplies electricity to 9m customers in Japan’s sunny south, was the first to balk, in September, after 72,000 solar-power producers rushed to beat the deadline for a cut in the guaranteed tariff to ¥32 a kWh. The company says it will accept no new applications to join the grid until it has settled concerns about the reliability of supply from the new producers. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is backing the utilities, and mulling a further tariff cut...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1FvK0YD
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