Japan/Canada in clean energy dispute
The Japanese mission to the WTO said the dispute centres on guaranteed long-term pricing for solar and wind generators made with a certain percentage of locally produced components.
Ontario, CanadaÂ’s most populous province, launched an incentive program for renewable energy producers last October, aiming to create jobs and eliminate coal-fired power generators.
Tokyo believes that the pricing guarantees offered by Ontario in the wind and solar sectors constitute subsidies that violate CanadaÂ’s obligations under international trade law.
The request for consultations by Tokyo is the first step in a WTO dispute. If the two sides do not reach an agreement on their own, a WTO panel would be set up to arbitrate the dispute in a process that could eventually lead to retaliation.
Related News

As California enters a brave new energy world, can it keep the lights on?
LOS ANGELES - Gretchen Bakke thinks a lot about power—the kind that sizzles through a complex grid of electrical stations, poles, lines and transformers, keeping the lights on for tens of millions of Californians who mostly take it for granted.
They shouldn’t, says Bakke, who grew up in a rural California town regularly darkened by outages. A cultural anthropologist who studies the consequences of institutional failures, she says it’s unclear whether the state’s aging electricity network and its managers can handle what’s about to hit it.
California is casting off fossil fuels to become something that doesn’t yet exist: a fully electrified…