The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is considering setting an ordinance requiring large business facilities to do their part to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, according to metropolitan government sources.
The sources said the metropolitan government will ask its environmental panel to consider numerical targets and penalties, with a view to setting the ordinance by the end of fiscal 2003.
It will also consider incentives to reward companies that have achieved the planned targets.
The momentum behind the new ordinance comes in response to concerns by local officials that the metropolitan government may not be able to achieve a carbon dioxide emissions target set under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Although the metropolitan government has agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions in Tokyo in 2010 by 6 percent from 1990 levels, the volume of such emissions over the past decade has in fact increased by more than 10 percent.
About 1,000 factories, office buildings and other facilities in Tokyo that each consume energy equivalent to more than 1,500 kiloliters of fuel oil a year, or more than 6 million kwh annually, will probably be subject to the ordinance.
Large business facilities, which comprise 0.1 percent of all business facilities in Tokyo, account for about 40 percent of the carbon dioxide that is emitted each year in the metropolis, according to a survey in August.
In April, the metropolitan government began requiring operators of business facilities to report the amount of their carbon dioxide emissions and compile steps to reduce the emissions.
However, even if these programs are fully carried out, overall carbon dioxide emissions will only be reduced by 2 percent from the current level in the coming three years.