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September.21st.2024 KIP Forum "Energy Geopolitics in a Pacific Century: The Trilemma framework and Japan's path forward "
Lecturer: Mr. Hunter McDonald, a Country Manager for Korea and Investment Specialist at Shizen Energy Group
Profile: Mr. Hunter McDonald is Country Manager for Korea and Investment Specialist at Shizen Energy Group, a Japan-based and globally focused renewable energy developer whose investors include CDPQ and Tokyo Gas. He concurrently serves as Interim CEO at TerraWind Renewables, an onshore wind energy platform in Japan and APAC launched in partnership between Stonepeak (a $61bn AUM PE fund) and Shizen Energy. Additionally, he is the Chief Strategy Officer at Japan Interconnector, a Shizen Energy-backed startup developing subsea cable power grid interconnectors in East Asia. Mr. McDonald previously spent 7 years in the energy trading business at Glencore, primarily focusing on infrastructure investments and structured trade origination. Having experienced the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima incident aftermath while in Tokyo as an investment banking analyst, Mr. McDonald developed an interest in global energy, sustainability, and geopolitics that he has pursued professionally since 2014. A dual citizen of the US and New Zealand, Mr. McDonald holds an AB from Harvard College in East Asian Studies with a secondary field in Economics, and an MBA and Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.
【Speech and Q&A】
In this forum, we could learn about the difficulty of choosing an optimal policy in energy fields because Japan, which relies on energy resources themselves and rare metals that are also necessary for renewable energy technology, should watch for the balance of security, sustainability, and affordability. Other than that, safety and eco-friendliness are what recent consumers, and also policymakers need to care about. It was impressive to hear concrete data with numbers such as GAFA using 2-4% of power demand around the world for running data facilities. Adding to that, his insight that Japan is easy to work on energy problems because there rarely is a change of government compared to the U.S. was completely a new perspective.
【Group and Ground discussion】
Every energy resource is not perfect. Mr. McDonald explained each energy resource’s strong and weak points. After that, we discussed what energy policy should Japan pursue based on his presentation. I choose energy security as the most important sector among security, affordability, and sustainability. Concerning the last two, we still have some spare time, but security is an urgent problem because Japan doesn’t have plenty of energy resources and electricity storage. The net-zero due year is 2050 and we still have time to innovate energy technology. However, in this volatile era, lifelines including energy resources are easy targets to gain dominance over other countries, which happened in real: the halt of LNG exports from Russia to Germany. Surely, the movement from fossil fuels to renewable energy is necessary, but this increases the risk of dependence on specific countries for rare metals needed for batteries and modules. I think Japan should increase the ratio of renewable energy gradually, not rapidly to lessen the jeopardy of sudden embargoes. I think Japan might be better off restarting nuclear power generation as a temporary power source until new technologies with less dependency on other countries' natural resources are invented. For example, now Japan is developing a new type of solar cell: the Perovskite solar cell. It is a relatively independent power resource because Japan can produce iodine which is an ingredient of those. People might remember the 3.11 tragedy of nuclear power, but this happened because the tsunami battered it. It bore the earthquake and countermeasures against tsunamis are developing. I think there are fewer risks with nuclear power plants now. Finally, I would like to say Mr. McDonald thank you for this intriguing forum.
Lastly, CNN English Express interviewed this Forum. Here is a link for the article about the KIP.Kotaro Ahiko, Tohoku University, Faculty of Engineering, 2nd year