Japan's Geothermal Expansion: Are Centuries-Old Onsens At Risk? | Power To The People

I really enjoyed this video, but it left out some really important information. As a permanent resident of Japan and lover of onsens, I think the following is important: 1. Other than renewables, Japan has no energy resources. Since shutting down its nuclear plants after Fukushima, it has needed to import more than 80% of its energy in the form of natural gas, oil, and coal. Solar and onshore winds farms are difficult to build because there's little flat land, and offshore wind farms are difficult because there's little continental shelf. Windfarms in general are difficult because of the risk of earthquakes. 2. There are more than 27, 000 onsens in Japan. It's not surprising that this town looks run-down as there's far more supply than demand. Yes, many onsens have been in business for hundreds of years, but many areas were over-developed during the bubble years and went from a handful of establishments in a village to a dozen. Most onsen towns look like the one in the video because the activity simply isn't that popular and there are competing tourist destinations. It would probably cost me as much in yen and travel time to spend three days in the Fukushima onsen as it would to stay in Seoul. I'd choose the onsen, but many wouldn't. 3. Only two groups of people were interviewed for this program: geothermal advocates and onsen owners. Of course the onsen owners are going to argue against it. (Side note: pretty rich for the director of the onsen coalition to say "water is a finite resource" when onsens use it for recreation, then discharge it, and geothermal plants can reuse it. ) How about the voices of those who want sustainable, locally produced electricity? How about those who want secure, domestic energy sources so that we don't have to rely on global markets? The video should have spent much more time on this side of the story. 4. The video plays dramatic music and uses terms like "rampant development." There is no "rampant development." Japan, with 576MW of geothermal power, is far behind tiny countries like Iceland (754MW) and poor countries like the Philippines (1,952MW). The reason for this is that culturally Japan is very conservative and slippery-slope arguments like "we will lose all of our onsens" dominate the discussion.

To start with, we should take a look at people's energy consumption and see where we can do to reduce it somehow. Would that be an important factor? or is the industry the major consumer for energy?. Interesting video though, thank you!.

The unit is wrong. It should be megawatt hours. Megawatt is the power produced at any one time. Megawatt hours is the cumulative energy produced over a given period of time. Considering this is a CNA documentary, this level of quality is very disappointing.