Japan's National Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Fiscal Year* 2015(Final Figures)

Under Article 4 and 12 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (hereinafter, Convention) and relevant decisions adopted by the Conference of the Parties, the Annex I parties including Japan (i.e. developed countries) are required to prepare national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories and submit them to the Secretariat of the Convention. Moreover, Article 7 of the Act on Promotion of Global Warming Countermeasures, which provides for domestic measures under the Convention, requires the Government of Japan to annually estimate and make public Japan's GHG emissions and removals.

In accordance with these Articles, Japan's GHG inventories in FY2015 were estimated.

Japan's total GHG emissions in FY2015 were 1,325 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalents (Mt CO₂ eq.; the same shall apply hereafter).

This is a decrease of 2.9% (39 Mt CO₂ eq.) and 6.0% (84 Mt CO₂ eq.) when compared to the FY2014 and FY2013 emissions (1,364 Mt CO₂ eq. and 1,409 Mt CO₂ eq.), mainly because of the decreased energy-related CO₂ emissions owing to lowered CO₂ emissions from power generation, as a result of decreased electricity consumption (due to energy conservation, cool summer and mild winter, etc.) and the improvement of carbon intensity in power generation (due to greater adoption of renewable energy, resuming nuclear power operation, etc.).

This is also a decrease of 5.3% (74 Mt CO₂ eq.) when compared to the FY2005 emissions (1,399 Mt CO₂ eq.), mainly due to the decreased energy-related CO₂ emissions in the industrial and transport sectors, despite the increase in hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) emissions from refrigerants following their substitution in place of ozone-depleting substances.

Removals by forest and other carbon sinks³ under the Kyoto Protocol in FY 2015 were 58.8 Mt CO₂ eq., consisting of 50.1 Mt CO₂ eq. by forest carbon sink and 8.6 Mt CO₂ eq. by cropland management, grazing land management, and urban revegetation.

Footnote:

1^. "Final figures" means the figures officially submitted to the Secretariat of the Convention as Japan's GHG emissions and removals in a national GHG inventory. The final figures compiled this time will be recalculated when annual values in statistical data are updated, and/or estimation methods are revised.

2^. There are some differences between the final figures compiled this time and preliminary figures released on December 6^th, 2016, because some estimation methods were revised for a more accurate estimation, and some recalculation was conducted based on annual values in statistics and other data which were made available after the estimation of preliminary figures. The preliminary figures indicated that the GHG emissions in FY2015 decreased 3.0% compared to FY2014 (6.0% decrease and 5.2% decrease when compared to FY2013 and FY2005).

^3. The removals by forest and other carbon sinks reported this time were estimated by calculating emissions/removals from activities under the Kyoto Protocol, in accordance with the decision of the 8^th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Kyoto Protocol.

For Japanese

Attached File:

• Japan’s National Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Fiscal Year 2015(Final Figures) <Executive Summary> [PDF 112 KB]
• Japan’s National Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Fiscal Year 2015(Final Figures) [PDF 38 KB]