Japan embraces lab-made fuels despite costs, climate concerns

For Japan’s largest utilities, lab-made fuels are a meaningful step toward greener energy that also extends the life of billions of dollars’ worth of existing fossil-fuel infrastructure.

For their critics, products like “e-methane” and “syngas” are not an attractive compromise but an expensive distraction, at a time when the country — already a climate laggard in global terms — should instead be accelerating its shift to renewable power.

Eager to win over naysayers, companies like Electric Power Development Co. and Osaka Gas Co. have…