The popularity of solar power is rising sharply in Japan in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami which destroyed the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hopes to restart some of the 43 remaining nuclear reactors that have been shut down since the disaster for assessments and upgrades. But in the interim, Japan’s renewable energy capacity has tripled to 25 gigawatts, of which more than 80% is solar power. The burst of enthusiasm is such that Japan has now joined the other six members of the G7 group of industrialized nations where solar power is economic without government subsidies.
