About four years after Asia's first mandatory greenhouse gas emissions-reduction scheme was launched by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, businesses in the capital have succeeded in drastically cutting carbon dioxide emissions without depending on emissions credit trading.
Due mainly to the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, which reduced utilities' electricity supplies and triggered legal curbs on power consumption by large-lot customers that year, Tokyo offices and factories covered by the cap-and-trade system have been able to easily meet their carbon dioxide reduction targets, a metropolitan government official said.
The program, which started in April 2010, caps energy-related emissions of around 1,400 offices, commercial buildings and factories that consume more than 1,500 kiloliters of energy in crude oil equivalent terms and allows for trading of emissions credits earned via reductions of more than obligatory levels.