Re-Visiting Carbon Lock-In in Energy Regimes: The Persistence of Coal Power in Japan

New investments in unabated coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) are incompatible with efforts to limit planetary warming to within the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement. There is thus an urgent global imperative to prevent new additions of CFPP capacity and retire existing assets. As studies increase on the various challenges associated with phasing-out coal power, a key but unresolved question is why some countries are able to reduce shares of CFPPs and rapidly increase renewables while others remain locked-in to historical preferences for coal. Literature highlights numerous material and non-material factors. These include the presence of coal extraction industries, material transaction costs (i.e. the relative cost of adopting alternative energy sources), the desirability of reputational benefits from becoming a coal phase-out leader, and differing market governance styles (i.e. market or state-driven). These explanations are entirely compatible with the concepts of ‘path dependency’ and ‘(carbon) lock-in’. These terms depict the tendency of technologies, markets and industries, policy and institutional environments to co-evolve in a mutually beneficial and self-reinforcing manner. Socio-technical systems can thus suffer from lock-in to current technologies, which can prevent the uptake of environmentally or technologically superior alternatives. The concept of lock-in is particularly relevant to Japan. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the nationwide reduction of nuclear power, Japan’s CFPP fleet has been extensively upgraded and expanded. It has grown by around 25% to roughly 54 GW, with 4.5 GW of capacity still under planning. Meanwhile, utilities, trading companies and plant equipment manufacturers are proactively exporting CFPPs to the developing world. National government policy is driving this activity. It positions coal as a reliable baseload power and calls for a 26% share of electricity in 2030. Additionally, it promotes continued investments in upstream extraction, CFPP exports and R&D for high-efficiency and next-generation coal power technologies Since Japan does not own large domestic coal reserves, this perpetuation of the coal industry amidst increasing global criticism cannot be understood by conventional explanations. Instead, as we argue, there are multiple material and non-material sources of lock-in that must be tackled if Japan is to ever downscale its coal industry. In this context, this paper examines: 1) the various lock-in factors in government, industry and society that are contributing to the perpetuation of coal power in Japan, and 2) emerging opportunities to overcome these. We adopt and expand on conceptions of (carbon) lock-in, path dependency and inertia to develop a synthesised analytical framework to explain various material and non-material causes of lock-in in socio-technical systems. We then empirically apply the lock-in framework using data sourced from around 40 semi-structured interviews and document analysis. This study makes several contributions to literature. Firstly, it collates varied discussions of the causes of (carbon) lock-in that were until now scattered across differing academic fields. Second, it empirically demonstrates how feedbacks and interactions can occur across the differing components of socio-technical systems. Finally, it generates an improved understanding of carbon lock-in by extracting insights from an Asian context, which is so far underrepresented in literature.