During the 20th century, with energy supply and electricity production dominated by oil, coal, fossil gas, and uranium, Japan was import dependent. As an island country, being cut off from distant suppliers was a constant threat. What could be done was storing fuels, in particular coal and uranium fuels. But still the vulnerability was always there: without continuous inflow of fuels, power plants would stop producing electricity and cars could not continue to run.
In the 21st century, the global electricity sector is changing. In 2024 more than 90% of new electricity generating capacity was from renewable energy, independent of fossil fuels and uranium. Even in the US, under Donald Trump, more than 90% of new generating capacity was renewable energy in the first 5 months of 2025. The economic benefits of renewable electricity, mainly solar PV and onshore wind power, has made the development irresistible in market economies and also in China.
Since a few years, solar pv and onshore wind have been the cheapest sources of electricity in most of the world. What is even more important is that in the last 10 years, solar and wind electricity is available with a total cost lower than the price of energy in crude oil in an increasing number of countries. That made it an obvious possibility to replace oil with electricity in the transport sector. As the production of electric cars started, the battery industry was scaled up, and a combination of industrial learning and scale effects made batteries so cheap, they can be used also in the electricity grid itself, providing stability and balancing at lower cost than thermal power plants. This is clearly demonstrated in California and Australia.
China has seen the opportunities and seems to have followed a strategy based on the engineering opportunities and industrial learning. Even when they need to import some of the minerals needed to produce the equipment, they were early in doing so, and has taken a leading position in producing such equipment for themselves as well as for most of the world market.
The opportunity for Japan to become independent on imported fuels by solar- and wind-electricity may appear as a dilemma. Would it result in just replacing a dependence on a continuous inflow of uranium, coal, oil and fossil gas be another dependence on importing solar PV-panels and wind power plants?
The IEA has pointed to one difference. One trip of a container ship with solar panels can enable as much electricity generation as 50 shiploads of liquified natural gas or coal from 100 shiploads.
In addition, there are two important distinctions between being dependent of importing fuels and equipment.
First:
If imports of fuel stop, the thermal power plants stop producing electricity. Cars will have to stand still as they cannot fill up their fuel tanks.
If the import of solar- and wind-power equipment stops, existing solar and wind plants would keep delivering electricity, batteries can be charged and electric cars will continue to run.
Second:
Japan can produce the solar PV-panels, wind power plants batteries and all the equipment. Today the industry has lost the incentives to do so, and the Chinese and European industries may be more competitive, offering the products at lower price. But if needed it could be done with moderate extra costs. The cost of getting uranium, coal, oil or fossil gas in relevant quantities out of the Japanese land, however, would be colossal.
For Japan, the 21st century energy industry development is an opportunity to build an energy rich society.
