This Saturday was the first day of the Japan Geoscience Union - American Geoscience Union Joint Meeting 2017, where I was invited to present on the topic of "Sustainable and ethical energy access and consumption" as part of the session "Future Earth - Implementing Integrated Research for Sustainable Future".
As this was a massive conference with over 8,000 participants in total, I was able to have many discussions with people interested in this topic, as well as our overall department goal. Most notable was a professor from the Japanese Science Council, who kindly explained the politics behind Japan's use of nuclear power. Having a country in Asia with the potential power to create nuclear weapons in a short timescale as an ally acts as an important leverage in international discussions, and therefore the choice of whether or not to have nuclear energy in the country is not entirely up to Japan itself.
Additionally, I was recommended to visit the Life Cycle Carbon Minus (LCCM) house at the Building Research Institute at Tsukuba, which is scheduled for coming July. This house is equipped with technologies that eventually lead to negative carbon emissions. All in all it was a very good opportunity to discuss possible energy futures with many researchers and students.
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