Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga speaks at an April 22 meeting of government officials discussing measures to deal with global warming. (Koichi Ueda)

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's announcement on April 22 that Japan will aim to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 46 percent is noteworthy not just for the ambitious target but also for the unusual manner in which the figure was decided.

Suga himself played a key role in arriving at the figure, which Japan aims to achieve by 2030, sources said.

The 46-percent figure he announced to other world leaders participating in the April 22 online climate change summit had not been decided on even as of April 21, according to government sources.

Bureaucrats from different ministries calculated how much reduction was possible in various sectors, including energy that releases large volumes of greenhouse gases.

However, the accumulation of such figures only led to a target reduction figure of about 40 percent.

In coming up with the final figure, major differences arose in the views expressed by Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and Hiroshi Kajiyama, the economy minister.

Koizumi, at his April 6 news conference, said leaving the calculation up to bureaucrats would not produce a high enough target “to encourage private-sector investment and the maximum efforts by companies.”

Three days later, Kajiyama held his own news conference and warned that the industrial sector had to be consulted or it would not go along with targets set by politicians.

Suga has close ties to both Koizumi and Kajiyama. Because Suga and Koizumi represent districts in Kanagawa Prefecture, Suga considers Koizumi as someone who can eventually follow in his footsteps.

At the same time, Suga considered Kajiyama’s late father, Seiroku, to be his political mentor.

Sources said the final decision on the new emissions reduction target was likely made after Suga met with both Koizumi and Kajiyama on the morning of April 22. 

While government officials will likely try to demonstrate that Suga’s political leadership led to the higher target, there is no denying that the higher goals announced by Western nations also pressured Japan to keep in step.

In particular, the aggressive steps taken by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden forced the government to accelerate efforts to come up with a new reduction target. Suga’s meeting last week in Washington with Biden likely also influenced him on making the final decision.

At one time, the planned November meeting in Britain of the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) was seen by government officials as the venue to announce their new goal.

But the Biden-hosted online summit on climate change that began on April 22 led to a drastic change in plans.

The lack of time meant the past practice of first coming up with a basic energy plan before determining the reduction target had to be abandoned. The plan sets out the direction that various energy sources will contribute in terms of overall power and is now being considered by the economy ministry.

While the target for emissions reduction would normally be set after the basic energy plan was concluded, the process was reversed this time around.

Economy ministry officials also could not provide a specific rationale for why the 46-percent figure was decided on or how the various sectors would contribute to reaching the target.

That demonstrates that the decision on the percentage of the emissions reduction, a decision that will have huge ramifications on the future of industry and consumers alike, was made by only a few politicians behind closed doors.

(This article was written by Masatoshi Toda, Shinya Takagi and Daisuke Hirabayashi.)

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