"As Japan makes major investments in wind power, some residents are pushing back" 21 January 2024

About a 40-minute drive to the north from central Sapporo lies the Sea of Japan port of Ishikari, a city rich in biodiversity that now finds itself at the heart of a fierce debate over wind power as Japan scrambles to decarbonize its energy sector....

...offshore wind power projects, whose development, activists fear, will lead to irreversible environmental damage.

In May of last year, the offshore area of Ishikari was designated by the central government as a "promising area" for wind power generation. However, this area overlaps with the environmental conservation area on a wind power generation zoning map set by the city in 2019...

"There are also worries about the loss of abundant fishery resources, especially the impact the turbines would have on fishermen along the coast"...

At a December symposium in Sapporo on offshore wind and local community participation, municipal representatives from several cities in Hokkaido and Nagasaki spoke about the urgent need to persuade local communities, especially powerful local fishing unions that have legal rights to coastal seas, to accept wind projects by detailing their benefits...

Japan’s efforts to ramp up offshore wind power, in particular, are part of a larger international effort to embrace the energy source. At a meeting in Hiroshima last May, Group of Seven leaders pledged to collectively increase offshore wind capacity by 150 GW by 2030.

Yet in Ishikari, those questioning the wisdom of great increases in offshore wind also point to another international goal agreed to by world leaders in Hiroshima: achieving the target of effectively conserving and managing at least 30% of terrestrial and inland water areas and at least 30% of marine and coastal areas by 2030, nationally and globally, and halting and reversing biodiversity loss by that same year...