Japan: Government to Streamline Geothermal Power Development Process

Japan's famed hot springs called on to share the steam (Nikkei  Asian Review)

Government getting serious about geothermal power generation

Japan's geothermal resources are abundant. Only two other countries -- the U.S. and Indonesia -- have more. The country is sitting on 23.47 million kW of geothermal-sourced current but is only using about 530,000kW.

The government, which intends to triple geothermal power generation to around 1.5 million kW from current levels, intends to do more.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will revise its relevant guidelines during fiscal 2018 to allow geothermal power developers to simultaneously move ahead with their written and actual environmental impact assessments.

METI hopes this will result in halving the amount of time these assessments need to two years.

The ministry will also double the number of spots where it conducts environmental and resource surveys, then publicize promising geothermal power candidate locations.

These measures together with new boring technology could allow geothermal plants to be brought online in a decade, down from 14 years.

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