Energy reports
Japan-Australia Gas briefer (2026)
Year - 2026 Partners - Solutions for Climate Australia
This paper provides an overview of how gas has been imported for domestic use, the growth in LNG onselling and current fossil fuel trade flows with Australia based on reputable data sets. Key findings include:
Japan’s domestic gas consumption is down 27% since 2014 - Japan’s gas use for electricity is shrinking, from a 464 TWh peak in 2017 it is down 37% (to a 15 year low in 2025 at 337 TWh).
Japan onselling LNG is up 40%, with volumes increasing from 15mtpa to 44 mtpa - despite domestic consumption falling by a third, Japan is continuing to purchase record quantities of LNG. The country has an official handling target of 100 million tonnes per year even though consumption has fallen to 66 million tonnes and is continuing to fall.
The Japanese Government directly benefits from high LNG prices, but Australia isn’t - while LNG exporters in Australia are securing windfall profits from the fossil fuel crisis gripping the world, Australia is largely missing out from the sale of the nation’s finite gas resource.
Australia provides Japan 67% of thermal coal and 42% of gas requirements; in contrast, Japan only provides 7% of Australia’s diesel supply and less than 1% of petrol supply - Japan is highly dependent on Australia for energy imports, but despite current concerns regarding diesel supply, the reverse is not substantively true.
Japan remains a renewable energy laggard with solar, wind and hydro supplying just 19% of electricity in 2025; in contrast the UK, with a much smaller land area is at 38% share.
Japan-Australia Gas briefer (2024)
Year - 2024 Partners - Solutions for Climate Australia
This paper provides a short overview of how gas has been imported, used and exported by Japan over the last 10 years. Some key findings are:
Japan is the 2nd largest LNG consumer in the world - Japan has historically been the largest LNG importer in the world, only dropping to 2nd place in 2023 with a total demand of 93 bcm, compared China with the highest demand at 100 bcm.
Australia is Japan’s largest supplier of LNG and coal - Australia is the primary supplier of LNG to Japan, increasing its share of the Japanese import market from 36% in 2021 to 42% in 2022.
Overall gas use in Japan is in decline - Japan’s use of gas across all sectors is in a state of steady decline with overall gas consumption down by a quarter since 2012
Japan’s gas use for electricity peaked in 2014 - Japan’s use of gas for electricity generation peaked in 2014 at 450 TWh (following the Fukushima nuclear disaster), it has since declined significantly, falling to 333 TWh in 2023, a drop of 26%.
Japan is a renewable energy laggard - while it does have some geographic constraints, this hasn’t prevented other island-based and highly industrialised nations from decarbonising their electricity system
Japan plans to buy 100 Mt of LNG in 2030 - but only requires 50 Mt for domestic demand - reports by IEEFA (March 2024, November 2024) have stated that Japan has been onselling Australian LNG., this is contrary to Japan’s statements about Australian LNG being essential for Japan's energy security
