…For Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, which set itself a 2040 deadline for relying solely on renewables, the switch is about rebuilding hope in the future. When I visited Koriyama, Fukushima’s commercial center, last year, the mayor, Masato Shinagawa, described renewable power as a “must-succeed mission” to rebuild a region shattered by the nuclear reactor meltdowns at TEPCO’s Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011. He called the resurgence of solar power in Japannothing less than the “Prometheus of the 21st Century.”
The hopefulness is contagious. Costa Rica’s striving for 100 percent renewable power went viral in March when state utility Grupo ICE revealed that the country’s grid had been fossil-free since the beginning of 2015 thanks to bumper rains that filled hydropower reservoirs to the brim. Last month Grupo ICE projected that its fossil-fueled plants would supply just 2.9 percent of power in 2015 as a whole, and new hydro, wind and geothermal power in the offing should put the final stake in its fossil fuel habit…
