Galvanized by last year’s nuclear accident, Japan’s Energy and Environment Council adopted a new policy September 14 promising to eliminate nuclear power by the 2030’s and to significantly increase the use of renewable energy. Until last summer, when Japan shut down all 54 of its reactors, nuclear power supplied about 10 percent of the country’s energy. Japan has revised its original pledge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2025 to a less aggressive target of a 20 percent reduction by 2030, and estimates that the country will decrease its total electricity output by 2030 by 10 percent compared with its 2010 levels, while reducing it energy consumption by up to 19 percent in the same time frame. Those reduction goals could be met with the development of renewable energy, energy optimization, and the use of technologies such as smart meters.