Graspp-dp-e-15-001

 

 

7 

 

2030’, the national economic system and Japan’s changing society evolved naturally 

and interacted with each other.   The framework of the scenario is shown below. 

 

Figure 1. 

 

 

 

The aspiration of the client, METI, was clear.  They wanted to drive the present 

societal-industrial system to a less carbon-intensive model, given that it was the 

international fashion in 2004 to develop visions of the future ‘low carbon society’. 

 

Unsurprisingly, the “Self-sustaining Development” scenario was the one METI 

wanted to promote.   During the scenario study process I accepted their eagerly 

chasing the low-carbon vision, and the storylines toward the year 2030 were created.  

Then, in the following workshop, I asked the participants to deliberately derail from 

the preferred scenario and think of any possible ‘failed’ scenarios.  Suddenly, the 

workshop process was revitalized.   The worrying future of No Action 

(“Environmental Constraint”) and Not-Enough Action (“BAU” again) appeared.  The 

research team willingly jumped in to consider the new issues.  The METI client also 

decided to incorporate potential oil shocks into their thinking in order to give an 

abrupt discontinuity to their stories.  Thus the scenario framework was found and 

fixed.    All that remained for me to do was to edit scenario stories.  “BAU”, 

“Environmental Constraint” and “Crisis” were written to be as equally plausible as 

“Self-sustaining Development”. 

 

In March 2005, ‘Energy 2030’ was presented to a government-led, high-powered 

expert council advising on Japan’s energy policy.  The work was well-received, and I 

was pleased to see the scenario evoked a high quality debate.  Also, the paper 

appeared on government website for several weeks to invite public comments, from 

which METI could collect many interesting inputs and opinions.  The council decided 

to keep the scenario story in its policy paper, which went straight to politicians who 

are to decide Japan’s long term energy policy.   “Energy 2030” was a triumph. 

Wealth and 

High economic Growth

Sustainability

・

Sustainability

・

regulations on CO2

・

energy guzzler

・

economy growth

・

market mechanism

Low Growth

Self sustaining

Development

scenario

Environmental

Constraint Scenario

Crisis

Scenarios

BAU

scenario

NOW

Environmental

Burdens

Economy Environment

Win-Win

＠ＭＥＴＩ

Paths to 2030  and Multiple End Results

---

 

 

8 

 

 

Then there was a postscript.  The METI senior official, a fan of scenario planning, 

moved to his next posting, and a new bureaucrat took over.   His role was to make the 

“Self-sustaining Development” scenario come about.  How to do it?  Eventually he 

found the so-called ‘back casting approach’ which had been proliferating  in IPCC 

papers: that is, defining a desirable future and then working backwards to identify 

policies and programmes which will connect that future to the present.  The new 

official decided to introduce this novel approach to ‘his’ energy outlook.  METI again 

called me with several econo-energo-metric

3

 modellers to set out, in narrative and in 

numbers, the solid path to “Self-sustaining Development” in the year 2030.  

 

The back casting approach appealed to the modellers.  They were suddenly free from 

the data sets of the past and were allowed to tinker with numerical targets in the future. 

Uncertainties and dynamics in the course of arriving at the distant targets were simply 

buried in the complex model.  In this second-round study, industry was encouraged to 

provide information on state-of-the-art technologies and their possible development.  

The outcome was an Energy Road Map and a Technology Road Map.  

 

In this study, I found I could not contribute much.    For the modellers, a meddling 

scenario man was persona non grata.  Government still called the outcome a scenario 

study; however the special flavour of the old exploratory spirit was lost. 

 

“Energy 2030” was a timely work amid the increasing pressure to respond to the 

global climate change agenda.  “Self-sustaining Development”, the vision scenario of 

METI, was presented to those who were to decide, which led to the follow up works: 

the Road Maps.     

 

2.4. Urban planning: academia learns the public scenario game 

 

In 2008/09, I edited a book of six scenario  studies focusing on Japan’s long term 

future.  This project was undertaken by university scholars and took two years. I 

joined the project as the designer, facilitator and writer of scenario stories.  The 

academics would not act on the scenarios they created, but advocate implications of 

the study to the general public, especially those interested in public policy. 

 

One of the works was “Urban Mobility 2040”.  Here, we the study team tried to 

illustrate the several possible shapes of Japan’s urban design and civic mobility in the 

coming century. We came up with two scenarios.  “Public Transport Scenario” told of 

heavy investment in, and utilization of, Japan’s public urban transport system, 

bringing about a society with low carbon emissions.  “Private Transport Scenario” 

explained how electric vehicle (EV) technologies and related services would boost the 

Japanese economy and gradually change Japan’s transport and urban societal system.   

 

 

 

                                                 

3

 An econo-energo-metric model is one of the tools energy economists use to forecast future 

developments in the energy system, nationally or regionally.  In the simplest terms, experts use the 

model to measure past relationships among such variables as GDP growth, sectoral energy demand 

growth, tax rates or subsidies on energy use, supply availability of energy sources (oil, coal, gas 

uranium and renewables) and so on, and then try to forecast how changes in some variables will affect 

the future course of others. 

---