Dropping the 6,000 MW oil plan for Tomato-East and rebuilding it on coal (1974)

A company with only one fuel to choose

For Hokkaido Electric, coal was at once a fuel re-selected on price and a fuel it was asked by the state and the prefecture to use. As president Yotsuyanagi Takashige said, fuel was not something the company could settle on its own judgement by economic rationality alone; the choice can be read as one made having accepted the role of anchor customer to a coal-producing region. Layered on top was the constraint of a thin transmission link to Honshu, which until 1979 obliged the company to balance supply and demand entirely within its own area.

The price of that role was not small. In 1979, before the switch to imported coal, with coal-fired plant at 40% of the fuel mix, the company’s results sank to last among the nine utilities, and ordinary profit fell to ¥500 million the following term. Even so, Tomatoh-Atsuma became the mainstay after the change to imported coal and drew in investment through to unit No. 4 in 2002. A fuel chosen under constraint turned into competitive strength over a quarter of a century — while the concentration on a single site rebounded, in 2018, as an island-wide blackout.