2017 Volume 30 Issue 2 Pages 121-130
Recently, Japanese local governments have promoted climate policies. Notably, numerous provincial governments have adopted “Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emission Reduction Program (ERP)”. ERP requires facilities with a certain amount of GHG emission or more to make a plan to reduce GHG emission. Moreover, ERP mandates such facilities to report their GHG emissions annually. ERP, however, lacks of penalty for facilities failing to reduce GHG emissions. Thus, some criticize ERP due to the lack of the enforcement mechanism. This study empirically examines whether the introduction of ERP reduces GHG emission. Specifically, we collected GHG emission from 1990 to 2013 at provincial level together with the timing of ERP adoption for each provincial government. We conducted a panel data analysis and found that GHG emission per worker was reduced from 8 to 10 percent in the manufacturing sector. The estimation results hinted that ERP is effective in reducing GHG emissions in the manufacturing sector.
