An order to restrict the use of electricity will be enforced from July, not only in the TEPCO service area, but also in all six prefectures of the Tohoku region plus all regions of Niigata Prefecture. All these regions are served by Tohoku Electric Power Co.
An order to restrict the use of electricity will be enforced from July, not only in the TEPCO service area, but also in all six prefectures of the Tohoku region plus all regions of Niigata Prefecture. All these regions are served by Tohoku Electric Power Co.
The order, based on the Electricity Business Act, will set a maximum limit on power consumption by large electricity users. Large electricity users are defined as those who exceed 500 kilowatts.
In Tohoku Electric's service area, power usage during the daytime on weekdays between July 1 and Sept. 9 will be restricted below an upper limit, set at 15 percent smaller than the maximum power usage during the corresponding period last year. Intentional violations will be subject to a fine not exceeding 1 million yen ($12,300).
The 15 percent reduction in maximum power use will impose an especially heavy burden on plants and offices in areas hit hardest by the Great East Japan Earthquake, which are still making slow steps toward recovery.
At Yamabishi Fisheries Co., a seafood processing company in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, chairman Takao Murayama is struggling to get his company to resume normal operations.
"Our plant was destroyed, and we are troubled by harmful rumors about the nuclear plant," Murayama said. "And now we are not even allowed to use electricity."
Of the company's two plants in Iwaki, the one near the coast was destroyed by the tsunami. The surviving main office suspended operations for more than a week because of a severed water supply. The damage amounted to 300 million yen, as compared to about 6 billion yen in annual proceeds.
Harmful rumors associated with the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have also dealt a heavy blow. The fish for its processed tuna--Yamabishi Fisheries' mainstay product--are mostly from the Southern Hemisphere. The company is screening them for radioactivity before shipping them out, but sales have plunged to about 80 percent of pre-quake levels.
Power consumption will also be restricted. The company plans to turn off lights and reduce the use of air conditioners, but most of the power it uses goes to its large refrigerators and freezers, some with temperatures below minus 50 degrees. Power usage shoots up when the outer air temperature rises.
Iwaki is the largest industrial city in the Tohoku region, home to 140 plants and other establishments that are categorized as large power consumers.
"How does the central government expect to boost industries and employment if it does not support us enterprises that are desperately trying to crawl out of a deep hole?" asks Murayama, who also serves on the board of the Iwaki Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The power use restrictions will also affect small- and mid-size enterprises.
Small metal processing companies dot Mizusawa Ward of Oshu city, known for the local specialty, Nanbu ironware. Plants equipped with electric furnaces to melt iron will be subject to the restrictions because of the large power supply contract, even though they have modest workforces of about 40 employees.
At Oisei Foundry Co., which manufactures auto parts and other products, orders received rebounded this year from a sharp drop following the 2008 Lehman Bros. investment bank collapse. The company suspended operations for more than a week after March 11, but returned to full production in April. But now the power use restriction looms ominously.
The goal of 15 percent reduction is based on last year's maximum power usage. For Oisei Foundry, which had a low utilization ratio back then, reduction from that level is all the more difficult. The company is therefore obliged to cut production starting in July.
"Now is the time we could make up for the shortfalls of the last few years," said Takashi Oikawa, the foundry's president. "But we have no choice but to restrict the orders we take."
Meanwhile, the economic ministry plans to ease the enforcement of the power use restriction order in all parts of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, the most heavily hit by the disaster, and also in parts of Aomori and Niigata prefectures. According to the Tohoku Bureau of Economy, Trade and Industry, about 800 of the total 3,900 establishments in Tohoku Electric's service area, targeted by the restriction, have applied for exemptions.
However, exemptions will be allowed only to "facilities indispensable to the restoration and reconstruction of the disaster-hit areas," mostly of public nature, such as local government offices and prefectural police headquarters buildings. The few eligible cases in the private sector will include facilities that process rubble and other disaster-derived waste, and businesses that employ, on request by local governments, five or more disaster survivors who lost their jobs because of the events of March 11.
"We want to see early reconstruction of the regional economy, so we are ambivalent (about the restriction)," said Makoto Kaiwa, president of Tohoku Electric, during a news conference on June 17. "But we have no choice but to solicit customers to save on power until our thermal plants and nuclear plants return to their former state."
(This article was compiled from reports by Koji Nishimura, Kaname Kakuta and Tetsuo Kogure.)