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442 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

Takao from November 2014 to the spring of 2015. Similar to the METI
subsidy, MIC’s program seeks to foster renewables, particularly biomass,
geothermal, and other 24/7 “baseload” energy, with the local community as the
lead agent in the project.
Additional finance for related smart energy systems includes cogeneration-
related subsidies managed by the MLIT and MOE. In the FY 2015 supple-
mentary budget and the FY 2016 initial budget, these subsidies total JPY
167.94. Moreover, the governing LDP (through its Study Commission on Re-
sources and Energy Strategies) maintains a comprehensive list of 46 national-
level distributed energy subsidies. The LDP categorizes the subsidies by their
respective central agency funder and publishes them on its website, indicating a
high level of interest in diffusing smart communities and smart energy. 15
It is not possible to calculate the total monetary value of these individual
subsidies, as many of them are part of much larger programs that are not solely
focused on energy. To take one example of this, the MLIT offers fiscal support
for local governments that want to harness waste heat energy in their sewage
networks. Japan’s potential for waste heat capture in the best areas of its
460,000 km of sewerage has been assessed at 15 million households’ worth of
heat energy use, so this program is potentially quite significant. However, the
MLIT’s support was part of the JPY 898.3 billion comprehensive disbursement
for social infrastructure (shakai shihon seibi sougou koufukin). There is no
indication of how much of the total disbursement is to be spent on waste heat
recovery. Moreover, the MLIT supplements this particular initiative on waste
heat recovery from sewers with the offer of sending expert staff to advise local
governments and other actors (such as private firms and publiceprivate col-
laborations), to assist the latter in working up project proposals and other
pertinent items. This deployment of expert assistance has a monetary value
that also cannot be quantified.
In addition to the aforementioned finance, the NRP is also in part devoted
to smart communities, and is a very well-funded initiative. Its initial budget for
FY 2017 is JPY 3.7 trillion, a sum that represents an increase over previous
years (NRPO, 2017). And as of March 2017, all of Japan’s 47 prefectural
governments, along with 65 cities and towns, had adopted local versions of the
NRP. The local versions differed in their respective lists of hazards and energy
inputs, reflecting local circumstances. However, they were all consistent in
their emphasis on exploiting local energy resources to bolster resilience. The
large number of subnational plans, less than 3 years after formal passage of the
NRP, suggests its legitimacy among subnational policy makers. The increasing
number of plans also adds to the fiscal support for smart and compact
communities.

15. The LDP list (in Japanese) is available at the following URL: https://www.jimin.jp/policy/
policy_topics/energy/131871.html.