JAPAN Law and Practice Contributed by: Rintaro Hirano, Yutaro Fujimoto, Yurika Masakane and Yutaro Kato, Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu
In addition, under the Act on Prohibition of Pri- vate Monopolisation and Maintenance of Fair Trade, the JFTC oversees the power industry. If any anti-competitive behaviour is detected, the JFTC has the power to issue an order to any person engaging in anti-competitive practices to take specific actions to eradicate such practice. On 30 March 2023, the JFTC issued cease and desist orders and Administrative Monetary Penalty Payment Orders to some of the major utilities due to cartel behaviour (some of these orders are being contested at the time of writ- ing). The JFTC determined that these major utilities agreed with each other in the autumn of 2018 at the latest to restrict sales to con- sumers located in areas where the other major utilities had previously monopolised the power supply before the liberalisation of the electricity retail market. The total amount of the Admin- istrative Monetary Penalty Payment Orders exceeds JPY100 billion, the highest amount ever ordered by the JFTC. METI also issued Business Improvement Orders, which included orders to some major utilities suspected of engaging in cartel behaviour, to implement measures pre- venting anti-competitive behaviour. In addition, METI instructed all the major utilities to imple- ment measures to establish fair power trading relationships.
• Rationalisation Act; • Act on the Regulation of Nuclear Source Material, Nuclear Fuel Material and Reactors; and • Renewable Energy Special Measures Act. 3.2 Obtaining Approvals to Construct and Operate Generation Facilities Electricity Business Act Unless the electricity capacity is below 10 MW, any person who intends to generate electricity for sale must first submit an application to OCC- TO for membership. Next, under the Electricity Business Act, that person must submit to METI a notification form containing certain prescribed information such as the location of the genera- tion facility and its power source. Operators are also generally required to file a construction plan of the generation facility with METI no less than 30 days prior to commencing construction if the intended electricity produc- tion capacity of the facility is over a prescribed level or the intended facility meets certain speci- fications. The generation facility must also pass a pre-use inspection conducted by METI before being used for commercial operation. EIA Act The operator must perform an environmental impact assessment in accordance with the EIA Act whenever the operator intends to construct a generation facility that falls within a prescribed category. Preparation of the environmental impact statement requires the following steps. (Some regional governments also have their own additional EIA process for the construction of certain prescribed generation facilities.)
3. Generation Facilities 3.1 Constructing and Operating Generation Facilities
The principal laws governing the construction and operation of electricity generation are the: • Electricity Business Act; • Environmental Impact Assessment Act (Act No 81 of 1997, as amended) (the “EIA Act”);
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