Coal Industry Policy and Clean Coal Technology

Abstract

In Japan, Coal Industry Policy has been focused, for many years, on industrial reactivation of her nation-wide coal mining regions and reclamation of devastated mining sites, etc. However, after fall in 1973, When the first oil crisis hit Japan, such new concepts as more expanded use of coal and increase of coal import from abroad came to be adopted, year after year, as an energy security policy.
The post-eighth Coal Policy issued in 1991 had characters as so-called a final readjustment strategy and also as a part of Japan's energy policy. In this up-dated coal policy, two major targets were postulated such as follows;
(1) stabilized coal demand and supply in the Asian Pacific region should be taken into consideration in addition to the traditional stabilized coal supply to Japan and (2) global environment issues should be considered as well as domestic pollution matters in Japan. To support this new strategy, new flexible targets have been highlighted and further development of advanced coal utilization technology has been accelerated in Japan.