Japan is a stunning case study in energy efficiency. We already know about the country's preemptive anticipation of high gas prices and resulting auto design, but it its industrial energy consumption is just as spare. The G-8 will hear all about it this week, and engineers from other countries already visit Japan to learn about their techniques.

As a whole, Japan has proven itself to be the master of long-term planning. In the '70s, the Japanese made the decision not to adjust back to cheap oil prices. They continued energy research when everyone else was just relieved gas prices went down. Since that time, they unofficially froze their energy consumption and have focused on using efficiency to negate the energy increase necessary for expansion.

Japan's business community still uses the same amount of oil as it did in the '70s. Many of Japan’s energy gains are made through cogeneration. They do not allow heat from industrial processes to be wasted, with some plants recycling 90% of their waste heat. They have cut their energy needs by up to 40% in some sectors, producing the same product with a fraction of the energy. “Japan rushed to embrace these technologies back in the 1980s,” Katsushi Sorida, head of the waste heat department at Kawasaki told reporters. “Now the rest of the world is finally catching up.”

Japan also employs very high gas taxes to discourage use. Consequently, the country has some of the fastest trains in the world, as well as the most rail use per capita. 

Japan’s energy efficiency hasn’t done very much for carbon emissions, but it is a step in the right direction. The first international climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, was negotiated a decade ago in Kyoto, Japan. It covered almost 200 countries (but not the US). The Kyoto Protocol includes cap and trade, fiscal redistribution and even responsibility for global warming leaving developed nations with more duty. Participating countries have universally failed Kyoto compliance, and a new treaty is said to be in negotiation for 2009.

Japan’s efficiency gains may have been made easier by a national culture of minimizing consumption and a community consensus against waste, apparent in almost every aspect of Japanese development. Hisakazu Tsujimoto, of the Energy Conservation Center, told The New York Times that “Japan taught itself decade s ago how to compete with gasoline at $4 per gallon. It will fare better than other countries in the new era of high energy costs.”