Japan offers to help Asia curb emissions, but will its co-firing technology extend use of fossil fuel power plants?

Japan sees co-firing as a potential emissions-reduction tool for the country, which lacks land to install renewables, and also for nations across Southeast Asia

Critics say co-firing technology is too costly and does too little to actually reduce emissions from fossil fuel-powered electricity generation

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Even as the nation aims to shift to cleaner energy sources, Japan remains heavily reliant on sites like Takasago, a coal-fired power station built in 1968 and considered far past retirement age. Photographer: Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 5:59pm, 18 Dec 2023

Japan is offering to help Asia-Pacific nations curb emissions with various technologies, including a climate solution that critics say may extend the life of fossil fuel power plants.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government on Monday hosted a meeting of leaders from the Asia Zero Emission Community, which includes Indonesia and Thailand, offering decarbonisation solutions such as bendable solar panels and offshore wind. One technique being promoted is co-firing, which uses less-polluting ammonia or hydrogen as a substitute for a proportion of coal or gas burned at power stations.

Japan sees co-firing as a potential emissions-reduction tool for the country, which lacks land to install renewables, and also for nations across Southeast Asia that have invested in coal-fired plants that could continue to operate for decades more.

“Coal-powered plants in Asia are much younger than those in the US and Europe, making it difficult to shut them down immediately,” said Mei Makinouchi, a deputy chief researcher at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, which provides economic and policy research and analysis. Developing nations could be helped with solutions that attempt to reduce the use of coal or gas, rather than being told to “stop using all fossil fuels at once,” she said.

Critics say co-firing technology is too costly and does too little to actually reduce emissions from fossil fuel-powered electricity generation. The technology is still in development and not yet available for wide deployment. Current proposals to co-fire ammonia or hydrogen in power plants typically involve replacing only 20 to 30 per cent of coal or gas burned.

Japanese manufacturers that make turbines and boilers for coal and gas plants are seeking to export such equipment that can be used with hydrogen or ammonia.

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For nations with rising power demand across Asia, “coal and gas power plants are the only things that can be used to help cover the exponential growth in electricity,” said Nobuhiko Kubota, managing executive officer and general manager of corporate research and development at IHI Corp., which began researching use of ammonia in 2013.