Japan’s government-affiliated organization, New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), published a white paper on renewable energy technology. In this white paper, it mentioned Japanese government’s plan to halve cost of wind generation on land, while promoting wind generation on the sea and wave activated generation.
It clarified technological problems and solutions of six power generation methods, namely, wind power, sunlight, solar heat, biomass, and wave power. Japan will improve the technology of wind generation, both on land and on the sea, to increase the share of wind generation from the current 0.5% to 3.6% toward 2030. It develops the technology to design high-performance windmills, run them calmly, and generate electricity even with moderate wind. The generation cost of the land model is currently 9-15 yen per kilowatt and projected to decrease to 5-8 yen in 2030. At the same time, Japan projects to decrease the cost of wind generation on the sea to 12-17 yen toward 2020 and 8-11 yen toward 2030 to make it more popular across the country.
The government also emphasizes the necessity of wave activated generation to make the best use of high density wave energy on the coastline of the Honshu main island, insisting that Japan can see bright future for the development of generation technology that utilizes the characteristics of a country surrounded by the sea. It also mentioned a plan to decrease the cost of ocean-thermal energy conversion, which utilizes the temperature difference between surface water and deep water, to 5-7 yen per kilowatt by 2030.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
No. 60: Develop the mass production technology of butanol (August 16, 2010)
Idemitsu Kosan and Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE) in Kyoto will jointly develop the technology to mass produce butanol that is the next-generation biofuel. Using rice straws as the raw material, the two organizations will produce butanol with the help of the self-developed recombinant fungus. Butanol is burnable with higher efficiency and more utilizable than bioethanol. They are scheduled to build an experimental plant toward 2013 and start to mass produce butanol in 2020.
Existing gas filling stations can handle butanol without any problem because it is easily mixable with gasoline and usable also for the diesel engine. This is why it is regarded as the favorite of biofuel. It generates 30% more calorie than ethanol when it is burnt and allows for a higher fuel-economy rating. In addition, it can be used for the production of synthetic fibers and as raw materials of biodegradable plastics and paints. The two organizations founded an association to develop the technology that changes such nonfood plant-based fibers as rice straw and corn haulms into sugar and puts the resulting sugar into the culture tank of RITE-developed recombinant fungus to produce butanol.
They plan to develop the mass production technology by changing the recombinant to be incorporated into the microorganism and by studying the method to culture microorganisms in a large quantity. They aim to produce 300 liters of butanol out of one ton of plants. They are confident that once the mass production system is established, the production cost of butanol will go down to 30-40 yen per liter as low as bioethanol and butanol grow popular as an alternative to fuels, such as gasoline and diesel and petroleum-derived chemical raw materials. Because the technology uses nonfood plants as raw materials, the technology does not adversely affect food production because it uses nonfood plants as raw materials, and it favorably affects the efforts to prevent global warming.
Existing gas filling stations can handle butanol without any problem because it is easily mixable with gasoline and usable also for the diesel engine. This is why it is regarded as the favorite of biofuel. It generates 30% more calorie than ethanol when it is burnt and allows for a higher fuel-economy rating. In addition, it can be used for the production of synthetic fibers and as raw materials of biodegradable plastics and paints. The two organizations founded an association to develop the technology that changes such nonfood plant-based fibers as rice straw and corn haulms into sugar and puts the resulting sugar into the culture tank of RITE-developed recombinant fungus to produce butanol.
They plan to develop the mass production technology by changing the recombinant to be incorporated into the microorganism and by studying the method to culture microorganisms in a large quantity. They aim to produce 300 liters of butanol out of one ton of plants. They are confident that once the mass production system is established, the production cost of butanol will go down to 30-40 yen per liter as low as bioethanol and butanol grow popular as an alternative to fuels, such as gasoline and diesel and petroleum-derived chemical raw materials. Because the technology uses nonfood plants as raw materials, the technology does not adversely affect food production because it uses nonfood plants as raw materials, and it favorably affects the efforts to prevent global warming.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
No. 59: Increase Japanese presence in the world water service market (August 11, 2010)
The world water service market was once dominated by four European companies, namely Veolia Water, Suez, and SAUR of France, and RWE of Germany. However, their combined share decreased from 60% to 30% in the past eight years because of the increasing presence of Asian companies including Hyflux of Singapore and K-Water of Korea. Japanese companies are also accelerating their efforts to increase the presence in the world market in collaboration with local governments.
Toyo Engineering, one of Japan’s leading engineering companies, and a subsidiary of Panasonic collaborate with Osaka City to construct and operate a small-scale water facility in Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam in 2011. Furthermore, Osaka plans to take the initiative in building a consortium and constructing a large-scale water service facility with an investment of seven to eight billion yen on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract.
Tokyo is also energetic to market its water supply technology to foreign countries. The leakage rate of water supply is said to be 10-20% in advanced countries and 50% in some developing countries, but Tokyo can take pride in the leakage rate as low as 3%. Tokyo’s technology seems to have a good prospect in the world market, but what matters most in the world market is the water supplied population. Veolia Water has 139 million water supplied population, whereas Tokyo has only 12.5 million.
There are about 8,000 public water suppliers in Japan, and each supplier is managed by a local government. Nearly 80% of the suppliers are very small with a water supplied population of less than 5,000. As a matter of fact, Japan is far behind England and Germany in privatizing the water supply business. This is why local governments need to collaborate with private companies to market their technologies.
Japanese membrane technology
Japanese presence in offering the water supply business as a system is low, but it has a big share in water treatment membrane market. Nitto Denko has 32% share and Toray has 27% share in the world. But a radical change is going on in the Chinese market. A Chinese maker originating from a university laboratory has been growing at an increasing rate of 80% per year for the past three years. It now accounts for 30% share in the Chinese domestic market using the low-price strategy. Toray built a mass production plant of its membranes in Beijing with an investment of 7.5 billion yen. With this new plant in Beijing, Toray increased the production capacity of its reverse osmosis membrane by 50%. Korea is also emerging a rival in the world market. Korea is reported to launch a substantiative experiment of the membrane treatment technology with an investment of 19 billion yen under the government’s leadership.
To compete with Chinese and Korean companies, a project attended by 27 universities and companies including Tokyo University and Toray has been launched in Japan. The leading authority in water treatment membrane from Toray takes the leadership. The project tries to develop a system named the Megaton Water System. As the name indicates, it tries to desalinate one million tons of sea water per day. With the help of a government subsidiary amounting to 2.9 billion yen, it tries to half the desalination cost by virtue of generation that uses salinity difference between pure water and sea water. The project team plans to put the technology into practical use in 2013.
With the growing population in emerging countries, the world water supply market is expected to grow 2.5 times as big as in 2007 to 86 trillion yen in 2025. Japan has been exerting lots of energy to make the water treatment technology as a star export product like railway and nuclear power generation.
Toyo Engineering, one of Japan’s leading engineering companies, and a subsidiary of Panasonic collaborate with Osaka City to construct and operate a small-scale water facility in Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam in 2011. Furthermore, Osaka plans to take the initiative in building a consortium and constructing a large-scale water service facility with an investment of seven to eight billion yen on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract.
Tokyo is also energetic to market its water supply technology to foreign countries. The leakage rate of water supply is said to be 10-20% in advanced countries and 50% in some developing countries, but Tokyo can take pride in the leakage rate as low as 3%. Tokyo’s technology seems to have a good prospect in the world market, but what matters most in the world market is the water supplied population. Veolia Water has 139 million water supplied population, whereas Tokyo has only 12.5 million.
There are about 8,000 public water suppliers in Japan, and each supplier is managed by a local government. Nearly 80% of the suppliers are very small with a water supplied population of less than 5,000. As a matter of fact, Japan is far behind England and Germany in privatizing the water supply business. This is why local governments need to collaborate with private companies to market their technologies.
Japanese membrane technology
Japanese presence in offering the water supply business as a system is low, but it has a big share in water treatment membrane market. Nitto Denko has 32% share and Toray has 27% share in the world. But a radical change is going on in the Chinese market. A Chinese maker originating from a university laboratory has been growing at an increasing rate of 80% per year for the past three years. It now accounts for 30% share in the Chinese domestic market using the low-price strategy. Toray built a mass production plant of its membranes in Beijing with an investment of 7.5 billion yen. With this new plant in Beijing, Toray increased the production capacity of its reverse osmosis membrane by 50%. Korea is also emerging a rival in the world market. Korea is reported to launch a substantiative experiment of the membrane treatment technology with an investment of 19 billion yen under the government’s leadership.
To compete with Chinese and Korean companies, a project attended by 27 universities and companies including Tokyo University and Toray has been launched in Japan. The leading authority in water treatment membrane from Toray takes the leadership. The project tries to develop a system named the Megaton Water System. As the name indicates, it tries to desalinate one million tons of sea water per day. With the help of a government subsidiary amounting to 2.9 billion yen, it tries to half the desalination cost by virtue of generation that uses salinity difference between pure water and sea water. The project team plans to put the technology into practical use in 2013.
With the growing population in emerging countries, the world water supply market is expected to grow 2.5 times as big as in 2007 to 86 trillion yen in 2025. Japan has been exerting lots of energy to make the water treatment technology as a star export product like railway and nuclear power generation.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
No. 58: Japanese government’s concrete plan for the purchase of renewable energy (August 9, 2010)
The Japanese government laid down a concrete plan that lets electric power companies purchase renewable energy. Scheduled to be enacted in fiscal 2012, it covers every kinds of renewable energy including sunlight, wind, and geothermal heat, though it currently focuses only on sunlight. It also covers power generated by electric power companies, though only power generated by households is currently subject to purchase. The purchase price of power generated by means other than sunlight is scheduled at 15-20 yen per kilowatt that is a little higher than in EC countries, because Japan’s higher cost for infrastructure improvement leads to higher generation cost.
The purchase price of power generated by sunlight is set at 48 yen per kilowatt in the existing law and will remain higher than other types of power in the new system, but it will be decreased in incremental steps with a view to expecting the industry to reduce photovoltaic generation cost. The key to a lower purchase price of power generated by sunlight is the spread of generation equipment that currently costs 500,000-600,000 yen per kilowatt generation capacity. Because electric power companies need to purchase relatively expensive power, users pay the extra price to be included in the electric power charges. The extra price that the standard household needs to pay is estimated at 150-200 yen per month.
The purchase price of power generated by sunlight is set at 48 yen per kilowatt in the existing law and will remain higher than other types of power in the new system, but it will be decreased in incremental steps with a view to expecting the industry to reduce photovoltaic generation cost. The key to a lower purchase price of power generated by sunlight is the spread of generation equipment that currently costs 500,000-600,000 yen per kilowatt generation capacity. Because electric power companies need to purchase relatively expensive power, users pay the extra price to be included in the electric power charges. The extra price that the standard household needs to pay is estimated at 150-200 yen per month.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
No. 57: Build charging infrastructure in an apartment complex for electric vehicles (August 4, 2010)
Nissan Motor and Daikyo that is one of Japan’s leading housing companies will collaborate to build charging infrastructure for electric vehicle (EV). The two companies start the substantiative experiment in an apartment complex that Daikyo manages in Yokohama to explore the best way to install and operate charging equipment. They will work out the best billing and settlement method for charging with the apartment management company. Data and information collected by the experiments will be made public. The substantiative experiment is scheduled between January and March, 2011. Nissan will offer its Leaf for the experiment. While Nissan emphasizes the importance of building an environment for charging EVs in apartment complexes, Daiko wishes to increase the asset value and customer satisfaction of apartment complexes. The move to spread EVs is growing widespread by every industry concerned in Japan.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
No. 56: Cool down the building with the help of highly absorbent ceramics (August 2, 2010)
INAX, one of Japan’s leading sanitary ware and household equipment, will start the substantiative experiment to hold down the temperature rise using highly absorbent ceramics. The company will put ceramics on the rooftop of a building to control the temperature rise in alliance with Mori Building in Tokyo. It will pave conical water-retentive ceramics, each of which is 1 cm in height and 3-4 cm in diameter, on the rooftop to mitigate the heat island phenomenon. The water-retentive ceramic can absorb 60% of rainwater in volume percentage and discharge the moisture in about 10 days. The water cools down the temperature of the surrounding area while it evaporates, and thereby cools down the temperature of the rooftop. Installation cost is estimated at 20,000-40,000 yen per square meter. The technology is scheduled to be put into practical use in 2011. INAX plans to sell this technology to local governments and cites in foreign countries as a measure for the heat-island phenomenon.
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