Privatization of Public City Gas Utilities

This book is a study on the Japanese city gas industry, which has been rapidly liberalized in recent years. Especially, it focuses on the background, reasons, methods, and effects of the privatization of publicly owned city gas utilities in Japan. In Japan, after the Great East Japan Earthquake, the liberalization of the electric power and gas business has progressed rapidly. There are a number of studies on the reform of Japan’s electricity market, but there are few studies on city gas business.

This book describes the state of Japan’s public city gas utilities and the necessity of their privatization. And it explains the role of concession as a method of privatization. Then it verifies that the effects of past privatization cases are insufficient. The book also covers deregulation of public utilities in Europe, which triggered Japan’s liberalization of its energy and other public utility sectors, and privatization of electricity and gas businesses in India, a developing country in Asia. Finally, this book explores future regulation and business of city gas industry. Pipeline network should be regulated to comply with future unbundling starting from 2022, and gas business altogether with electricity and water businesses need more digitization.

Takashi YanagawaKobe University

Takashi Yanagawa is a professor at the Graduate School of Economics at Kobe University, Japan, where he specializes in industrial organization. His work includes Risks and Regulation of New Technologies (edited jointly with Tsuyoshi Matsuda and Jonathan Wolff, Springer, 2020), Introduction to Econo-Legal Studies (edited jointly with Hiroshi Takahashi and Shinya Ouchi, Yuhikaku, 2014, in Japanese; China Machine Press, 2017, in Chinese; and currently being translated into English), among others. At present he is working on research projects having to do with the competition policies of platform businesses, energy market reform under the Paris Agreement, and econo-legal studies.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He was formerly the director of the Interfaculty Initiative in the Social Sciences at Kobe University and was also the vice-dean of the Organization for Advanced and Integrated Research at Kobe University. He was a visiting researcher at the Japan Fair Trade Commission, the London School of Economics, and the University of California at Berkeley. He was the president of the Japan Economic Policy Association and is currently a board member of the Japan Economic Policy Association and the Public Utility Economics Association. He is also a co-editor of the International Journal of Economic Policy Studies (Springer).

Shinichi Kusanagi

University of Hyogo

Shinichi Kusanagi is a professor of public utility law at the University of Hyogo, Japan. His research areas are public utility law and economic administrative law. He received his S.J.D. and LL.M. degrees from Keio University, Japan. He also received an LL.M. degree from Indiana University, USA, and an LL.B. from Keio University. He taught law and environment policy at the Evergreen State College in the USA as an exchange faculty member, and he was the dean of the School of Economics at the University of Hyogo. He received the Grand Award from the Japanese Society of Public Utility in 2018.

He is the author of The Energy Laws in the United States: Law and Policy in Economic and Environmental Regulations (Hakuto Shobo, 2017, in Japanese). He is also a co-author of The New Development of Energy Policy (Koyo Shobo, 2017, in Japanese), The Truth of Liberalization of Electricity and Gas (Energy Forum, 2017, in Japanese), Overall Electricity System Reform (Denki Shimbun, 2019, in Japanese), and The Study of Constitutional Law and Administrative Law from Lawsuits (Gakuyo Shobo, 2020, in Japanese). He was an editor of the Japan Social Innovation Journal from 2011 to 2020.