(For related story see G8-ENERGY/IEA (UPDATE 2)

By Chisa Fujioka

TOKYO, June 6 (Reuters) - A Japanese climate policy plan to be issued next week is likely to set a 2050 target to cut greenhouse gas pollution but it also needs a mid-term emissions goal for Japan to gain credibility at next month's G8 summit, experts say.

Japan is hosting the summit of rich nations to seal an agreement for the world to halve emissions by 2050, a target that the G8 said they would seriously consider at their summit last year in Germany.

But at a time when developing nations are calling for advanced countries to first commit to ambitious targets over a shorter time period, climate experts say Japan might lack bold policies at home to push international negotiations forward.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is expected to unveil a set of measures on Monday, including a target for Japan to cut emissions by 60-80 percent by 2050, but media reports say he will hold off on setting an interim target until next year.

"I understand a 2050 target is important, but as a practical, political agenda, a medium-term target for 2020 is more important," said Katsuya Okada, the main opposition Democratic Party's point person on climate change, said late on Thursday.

"I don't think we, as politicians, can commit to a target so far away," said Okada, referring to 2050, when he will be 97.

Yurika Ayukawa, vice chairperson of the 2008 Japan G8 Summit NGO Forum, agreed.

"Setting a target for 2050 would be a step forward, but the government needs to make it legally binding and set mid-term targets for 2020 or 2030 to show how it's going to meet that long-term target," she said.

"Unless it commits to a mid-term target, it will be hard to convince developing countries like China, India and Brazil to join a new global framework on fighting climate change."

Big developing nations China, India, Brazil and Indonesia will be at the G8 talks.

About 190 nations have agreed to negotiate a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2009. Kyoto binds 37 industrialised nations to cut emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

As pressure grows on governments to form a new plan, the International Energy Agency called on Friday for a $45 trillion "energy revolution" to stop carbon emissions more than doubling by 2050. [ID:nSP116202]

INDUSTRY BACKLASH

The tough U.N.-led negotiations, however, have made Japan cautious about committing to numerical targets, with domestic industries having long blamed the government for what they see as unfair goals under the Kyoto agreement, analysts say.

Japan is the world's fifth-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, but the only one among the top five under pressure to meet a Kyoto target.

The United States refused to ratify the protocol, Russia is on track to meet its goal and the pact set no targets for China and India because developing nations are excluded from making emissions cuts during the protocol's first phase that ends in 2012.

Japanese industries also object to the target's base year of 1990, which they say ignores major advances businesses made in the 1980s to increase energy efficiency.

A Japanese trade ministry official has floated 2005 as a "fair" post-Kyoto base year, although Tokyo has not officially specified what it should be.

"They don't trust the government's negotiating skills and that's why they've been unsupportive," said Kuniyuki Nishimura, research director at Mitsubishi Research Institute.

Businesses, led by the powerful Keidanren business lobby, have resisted binding targets as well as mandatory emissions trading akin to that already in place in the European Union.

Fukuda, in his policy speech next week, will say the government will consider introducing an emissions trading system after the Kyoto agreement expires, without giving details on how a future scheme would be designed, media said.

"Japan has come to realise that it can't ignore the huge growth in the EU's emissions trading system and the possibility that the United States will launch its own scheme in the future," said Naoyuki Yamagishi, climate change programme director at WWF Japan.

"Throwing his support behind the idea would also be an easy way for Fukuda to show he is doing something on climate change." (Additional reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by David Fogarty)

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