エネルギー革命と日本の電力産業・電力政策

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抄録

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the Japanese government and private enterprises switched energy resources from domestic coal to imported crude oil during the late 1950s, in particular to focus on the electric power industry and its policies. Beginning in 1955, the government had prohibited the electric power industry from building boilers that exclusively burned heavy oil but abolished the prohibition in 1960. This paper examines when and why the electric power industry first requested the removal of the ban on exclusive heavy oil burning. Further, it also looks at how the government reacted to the industry's claims. As a result of the examination, many ideas became clear.
First, in 1957, the electric power industry, especially the Committee of Modernizing Electrics, started to claim that they needed to burn heavy oil exclusively because it was becoming certain that the supply of domestic coal could not meet the rapidly increasing demand for electricity. This meant that the electric power industry would have to consume much more heavy oil, without regard to price. So it opted for the exclusive burning of heavy oil in order to consume the oil at the lowest cost.
Second, the government, especially MITI and the Economic Planning Agency, took the initiative of adopting and establishing the electric power industry's claim as their energy policy. This enabled them to keep down the cost of power generation and to supply enough electricity for maximum growth. Therefore, the protection of the domestic coal industry was never in the mainstream of Japan's energy policy.