TOKYO – When Warren Buffett’s investment company Berkshire Hathaway announced last August that it had acquired more than 5% of the five largest Japanese general trading companies – Mitsubishi Corporation; Itochu; Mitsui & Co; Marubeni; and Sumitomo Corporation – most failed to notice that Buffet was buying into coal-fired power projects.

Within three months, a group of institutional investors led by Nordea Asset Management of Finland sent a letter to Mitsubishi Corp requesting that it abandon its Vung Ang-2 coal-fired power plant project in Vietnam. Friends of the Earth, Greta Thunberg and Japanese environmentalists piled on, but to no avail.

In February, however, Mitsubishi Corp announced its withdrawal from the Vihn Tan 3 coal-fired power plant project, also in Vietnam, and said that Vung Ang-2 would be its last such project.

Both Itochu and Mitsui & Co have also announced plans to exit thermal coal. Marubeni and Sumitomo Corp plan to do so except in cases when no other source of power is available and where the most advanced emission-reduction technologies are used.

So what will they do instead?

These are large companies with annual […]