Japan has led two major regional summits this month to promote carbon capture technologies, an effort that climate groups say could create a smokescreen for the continued use of fossil fuels.
Last week, Tokyo hosted the Japan CCUS Summit, focused on “carbon capture, utilisation and storage”, a conference that was attended by major domestic and international oil and gas firms, as well as government officials from the UK, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and South Australia.
The day after, energy ministers from Japan, Australia and nine Southeast Asian countries met in Kuala Lumpur under the Asia Zero Emission Community (AZEC), an initiative that Japan launched in 2023 to propel decarbonisation but has since been criticised as promoting and prolonging fossil fuel use.
In a joint statement, AZEC ministers confirmed their commitment to the COP28 deal in Dubai, in which countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, while also accelerating carbon capture. The AZEC statement stresses the importance of “various and practical pathways” to achieving carbon neutrality.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) encompasses abatement technologies that capture the CO2 emissions of fossil fuel projects at the production site. While CCS is regarded as a solution to reduce emissions in sectors that are difficult to decarbonise like steel or cement, it has so far proved expensive, and capture rates have been lower than expected.
In the lead-up to the COP30 climate summit in Brazil next month, there are concerns about what Tokyo’s enthusiasm for CCUS means for broader emissions reduction efforts.
“There’s a lot of diplomatic muscle that Japan is deploying behind the promotion of CCS,” said James Bowen, a climate and energy policy analyst at Climate Analytics, a research organisation. “Japan has already played a significant role in previous COPs in pushing this idea of abated fossil fuels being a viable alternative to fossil fuel phaseout.”
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According to the Japanese government’s 7th Strategic Energy Plan published earlier this year, CCUS can support decarbonisation in sectors where electrification is hard to achieve only with renewables, by abating emissions from fossil fuel sources.
“CCUS is indispensable for simultaneously achieving energy security, economic growth and decarbonisation,” the plan says, adding that Japan will consider support systems to encourage investment and develop suitable sites, among other things.
Climate Home News contacted Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Lifeline for fossil fuels
The latest AZEC declaration adopts language often used by Japan to signal that it and other countries, especially in the Global South, “have to have (their) own pathway to reach net zero”, due to specific “limitations” and “conditions”, said Makiko Arima, a senior finance campaigner at Oil Change International, which recently published a fact sheet on Japanese financing of CCS.
Arima sees Japan’s approach as a smokescreen for continued justification for fossil fuels under the guise of decarbonisation.
Investing in CCS risks diverting resources from clean energy adoption in Southeast Asia, where renewables could make up around 90% of the power supply by mid-century but 99% of solar and wind energy potential remained untapped, according to a 2023 Ember report.
AZEC has led some progress on clean energy in Southeast Asia, with several recent agreements on solar energy, for example. But there is “a concerningly high share of various fossil technology-related agreements and projects”, said Hanna Hakko, senior policy advisor at climate change think-tank E3G.
For example, out of 17 projects in Indonesia focused on new and existing power facilities and industrial energy projects, seven were related to improving the efficiency and carbon footprint of existing fossil fuel power plants, including co-firing of alternative fuels with coal and gas, an E3G assessment of AZEC’s first years, published prior to last week’s ministerial meeting, shows.
Comment: Is “hard-to-abate” really that hard – or is it a justification for delay?
Among the almost 50 memoranda of understanding announced at the meeting this month, six are specifically focused on carbon capture and at least another three refer to it as one of several targeted technologies.
Of the projects announced this year, eight are directly related to fossil fuels, while another two are related to technologies often used to abate fossil fuels such as ammonia and CCS, while not explicitly mentioning fossil fuel-related use.
Later this month, another AZEC summit in Malaysia will bring together the heads of government of its 11 member states.
Costly and controversial technology
Carbon capture projects worldwide have so far failed to meet expectations due to exorbitant costs and technical hurdles. While scenarios aligned with the Paris Agreement goals assume CO2 capture rates of 95% or more in CCUS projects, real-world results have hovered around 50% on average.
Because of this under-performance, according to a report by Climate Analytics, “if Asian countries were to follow a high-CCS pathway, it could lead to additional cumulative GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions of almost 25 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent by 2050″ – or more than double China’s annual emissions.
“People will eventually understand that [CCS is] an expensive and failure-prone technology and diverts attention away from more viable climate and economic strategies,” said Bowen, who worked on the report. “But in the meantime, it will delay climate action.”
While other regional players such as China and South Korea are also investing in carbon capture, Japan is leading the way. The world’s fifth-largest emitter aims to launch the technology commercially by the end of this decade and capture 120 million-240 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of CO2 by mid-century. At the moment, all the world’s CCS plants combined can hold about 51 mtpa.
“One of the big drivers for pushing CCS is that it benefits high-emitting sectors, like coal-fired power plants, that the (Japanese) government doesn’t want to phase out,” said Ayumi Fukakusa, executive director of Friends of the Earth Japan, which contributed to Oil Change International’s research.
According to Fukakusa, the prevailing narrative is that Japan is not competitive in clean energy sectors, therefore its industries want to continue leveraging their perceived advantage in fossil fuel-based technologies.
While they don’t necessarily believe carbon capture will generate significant economic advantages – hence the reliance on Japanese government subsidies – “they can buy time by promoting CCS,” Fukakusa believes.
Business-as-usual energy policy
Over the past 11 years, Tokyo has spent $5.2 billion in public funds on domestic and overseas carbon capture – including blue hydrogen, where hydrogen is produced from natural gas and CO2 is captured in the process, according to Oil Change International. Its report frames Japan’s CCS policy as perpetuating fossil fuel-based industries while diverting finance from proven climate solutions such as renewable energy.
The country has also explored ways to ship captured CO2 to underground or undersea storage sites thousands of kilometres away in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia and Indonesia, and Australia.
Carbon colonialism? Malaysia and Indonesia plan storage hubs for Asian emissions
At last week’s AZEC ministerial meeting, a memorandum of understanding was announced between the Japanese economy ministry and the Malaysian government that foresees bilateral discussions through a joint committee to co-operate on carbon capture, including cross-border CCS.
“It’s very hard to imagine wide-scale uptake of CCS [in Southeast Asia] in the near future, whether supported by AZEC or not,” E3G’s Hakko added. “All these CCS-related initiatives and events are really part of Japan’s longer-term approach to energy policy.”
Consistent with the Japanese government’s approach of pushing “various realistic pathways”, according to Arima of Oil Change International, CCS is “giving a spin to not actually changing much, but making it seem that they’re addressing” the need to reduce climate-heating emissions.
The post Japan uses “diplomatic muscle” to push carbon capture as fossil fuel panacea appeared first on Climate Home News.
Japan uses “diplomatic muscle” to push carbon capture as fossil fuel panacea
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.