Phasing out nuclear power in Japan will cost the country the equivalent of $622 billion to build a power grid around renewable energy and means it will fail to meet a target to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

That’s an estimate from the government as it mulls going ahead with a recommendation made yesterday by its own advisory body to eliminate use of atomic power, an option favored in public opinion polls, in its first post-Fukushima energy policy.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has called a press conference this evening in Tokyo when he may follow the advice of the ruling party advisory board and phase out nuclear plants over the next two decades. That would require more use of fossil fuels as wind and solar plants are built, meaning Japan won’t meet a pledge to cut greenhouse gases 25 percent over the three decades starting in 1990.

“There is no doubt the government will scrap the 25 percent target,” Keigo Akimoto at the Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth wrote in an e-mail response to questions. Without nuclear, Japan would have to buy 320 million tons of overseas emission credits a year to meet the target and the public won’t accept that amid higher sales taxes and electricity tariffs, the researcher said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-06/japan-axing-nuclear-for-renewables-means-missing-carbon-targets.html