Japan, one of the world's major oil, gas and coal importers, saw its electricity generated from fossil fuel sources in 2025 drop to a low in more than a decade, mainly driven by the steady rebound in nuclear power generation, Reuters reported.

Following a major meltdown at the Fukushima power plant as a tsunami hit the facility in 2011, Japan's nuclear power sector has seen a remarkable rebound, emerging as the country's largest source of power in 2025. This allowed power utilities to cut the usage of gas-fired plants to the lowest level in at least six years, the report showed.

In January-October 2025, the share of power generated from bioenergy plants and solar farms increased 7% and 14% year on year, showed data from Ember. Although nuclear-powered electricity output remains 73% lower than 2010's total, it contributed over 10% to the total power generation in the period, which is the first time since 2011.

Clean electricity output during the first 10 months of this year totaled 326.3 TWh, jumping 9% from a year ago and reaching the multi-year high since 2010. The significant growth was fueled by the steady return of the Japanese nuclear plants, the report noted.

After closing 54 reactors in 2014, Japanese government has gradually resumed their operations in recent years. As such, nuclear power generation climbed from less than 5 TWh in 2015 to about 78 TWh in 2025.

The country has restarted 14 of the 33 operable reactors, and plans to reboot two of the reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant over the coming months, which may provide more momentum to the country's energy transition.

As its power supplies from nuclear plants and clean energy assets continued to grow, Japan has been cutting imports of fossil fuels.

In November, it imported 12.92 million tonnes of coal and 4.73 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas, dropping 2.5% and 6.3% on the year respectively, according to the preliminary data from the Ministry of Finance.

The steady decline sparkled concerns among gas and coal exporters, who have to seek other buyers for the extra supplies in 2026 and beyond.

However, as utilities lift power output from nuclear reactors and cut back that from plants burning imported gas and coal, the country's power supplies should get both cleaner and cheaper, the report concluded.