Having taken a break for the summer holidays in August, this is our first press conference in two months, and I would therefore like to speak to you today both as chairman of the FEPC, and as president of Kansai Electric Power Company.

First of all, I would like to comment on the supply and demand situation during the summer. As you know, FEPC members appealed widely to the public to curb electricity use during the summer, and I am pleased to say that the response was most gratifying. I understand that President Katsumata of TEPCO recently held a press conference to thank customers for their support, and I would like to take this opportunity to add my own thanks to everyone who cooperated.

Next, as chairman of the FEPC, I would like to comment on the follow-up to the Electric Power Providers' Environmental Action Plan. Details are shown in the Reference Documents.

The Action Plan outlines electric power industry policies and plans aimed at addressing the issues of global warming and the creation of a more holistic society. Each year, we conduct a follow-up to review what we have achieved and study trends at home and abroad. This year was our sixth such follow-up.

Let me summarize the main points briefly. CO2 output reduction targets and results are shown at the bottom of Page 1 of the Reference Documents. 2002 CO2 emissions intensity (the amount of CO2 produced for each kilowatt hour of electricity use) rose by 7.4% to 0.407kg in 2002.

The reason for this increase can be seen by looking at the table in the middle of Page 2 of the Reference Documents, which shows that the long hiatus in nuclear power plant operation reduced the amount of nuclear-generated power supplied to the grid by 3.4 points (from 34.6% to 31.2%). As a result, dependence on thermal-generated power rose by 3.8 points (from 55.6% to 59.4%).

However, as is shown in Note 1 of Page 4, nuclear power accounts for approximately 225 million tons of the 373 million tons in suppressed CO2 output that current measures are calculated to have produced in 2002 - reminding us once again how necessary nuclear power is to our efforts to address global environmental issues.

As has been announced, by 2010 we of the electric power industry have pledged to strive to reduce CO2 output by 20% in comparison to 1990 levels. Although this will not be an easy goal to achieve, we hope to attain it by moving ahead with the development of new nuclear facility sites, by making more efficient use of current nuclear and thermal generating resources, and by giving consideration to the implementation of Kyoto Protocol mechanisms.

I would now like to turn to the subject of long-term nuclear waste disposal. Details are shown on Page 5 of the Reference Documents.

As the graph in the middle of the page shows, 8.32 million tons of waste were generated in 2002, an increase over the previous year of 250,000 tons. However, because the amount of recyclable material was increased to 340,000 tons, the amount of waste designated for long-term disposal fell by 90,000 tons to 1.41 million tons. Which means that in the four years since 1999, we have achieved a recycling rate of over an 80% -- nearly double the national average.

In addition, we forecast that the total amount of waste produced by the electric power industry in 2010 will be 9 million tons, which is 1.8 times the amount generated in 1990. In line with this, our goal for 2010 has been to hold the amount of waste requiring long-term storage to under 200 tons, which is less than it was in 1990. Now, in view of our progress so far, we are determined to move ahead with recycling efforts and reduce our waste output even further, and have set a new 2010 target for non-recyclable waste of 150 tons.

In the future, we will strive even harder to attain this new goal, and will make every effort to maintain and improve our thermal generating efficiency and develop new ways to use coal ash cheaply and in large quantity.

We of the electric power industry have made environmental issues a key management priority, and we are prepared to independently and aggressively work to simultaneously achieve economic growth, energy security, and preservation of the environment.