Visitors stroll through the grounds of Nezu Shrine during the annual Azalea Festival in Tokyo on April 14, 2026. (Photo by Kazuhiro NOGI / AFP)
Tokyo: Japan's net greenhouse gas emissions fell 1.9 percent in 2025 to hit their lowest levels in more than a decade, partly due to a slight uptick in nuclear and renewable energy, the government said Tuesday.
Japan is heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels and is the world's fifth-largest single-country emitter of carbon dioxide, although it is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050.
In the 2024 fiscal year, which ended in March 2025, net greenhouse gas emissions reached 994 million tonnes, marking the first time the net total has fallen below the one-billion-tonne threshold, the environment ministry said.
It is the lowest level since the 2013 fiscal year, when it recorded 1.39 billion tonnes. Japan uses that figure as its base to compare changes in emissions.
But Mie Asaoka, president of the Japan-based NGO Kiko Network, which focuses on climate change, told AFP that the shift to clean energy is not moving fast enough.
"The decline in Japan's emissions from fiscal 2023 to 24 is very small... (as) coal-powered electricity is not declining (much) while the increase in renewables is also small," Asaoka said.
"Japan needs to do more."
Environment ministry official Taichi Shirato told AFP on Tuesday that the emissions fall was chiefly due to a drop in energy consumption linked to output declines in the manufacturing sector, as well an uptick in renewable and nuclear energy sources in Japan's energy mix.
In the 2024 fiscal year, 67.5 percent of the country's electricity came from coal, gas and oil -- slightly down from 68.6 percent the previous year.
Over the next 15 years, Tokyo wants that figure slashed to 30-40 percent.
Shirato said that "longer term, greenhouse gas emissions have been declining" despite GDP growth, due partly to Japan's economy relying less on large-scale heavy industries.
Japan aims to achieve a 46 percent emissions cut by fiscal 2030 from the 2013 level, 60 percent by fiscal 2035 and to realise carbon neutrality by 2050.
But last month, the government said Japan plans to temporarily lift restrictions on coal-fired power plants as it seeks to ease an energy crunch caused by the Middle East war.
Net greenhouse gas emissions are calculated by subtracting the amount absorbed by forests and other carbon sinks from the total.
