85% CO2 reduction possible: environment white paper

Jun 2, 2009 - The Associated Press

Tokyo - It would be possible to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around 85 percent by securing green spaces in crowded residential areas and renovating houses to make them energy-efficient, the government's 2009 environment white paper, issued Tuesday, suggested.

The white paper also stressed the need for so-called "Green New Deal" policies to strike a good balance between environmental and economic measures, calling for promoting replacement demand for more energy-efficient home electronics products amid the global economic slump.

The calculation was conducted in an 8,000-square-meter residential area in Tokyo.

Integration of two-story wooden houses into complex housing would secure green spaces occupying around 40 percent of the area and rooftop gardening would be introduced.

Combined with this, introduction of solar energy generation and heat-insulating building materials would ease the "heat island phenomenon" on a hot summer day, when power consumption reaches its peak, leading to an around 85 percent reduction in CO2 emissions per day in the area, according to the white paper.