A Study on the Actual Conditions of Renewable Energy Use in the Japanese Municipalities based on the Third Nationwide Survey

Three years has passed since the second nationwide questionnaire survey of municipalities on renewable energy policy in Japan was completed. Since then, the situations with which municipalities are faced have been changed drastically. In order to find out how municipalities react to such changes, and how are new trends in renewable energy policy emerging, the third survey was conducted from October 2020 through March 2021 jointly by the Hitotsubashi University NaturalResource-based Economies Project, The Asahi Shimbun Company, Hosei University, Nagoya University, and Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies. There were responses from 1289 municipalities, for a response rate of 74.0%. In this paper, we present the first aggregate analysis of replies to the questionnaire and issues that are expected from the results.