Wednesday, August 18, 2010

No. 61: NEDO’s white paper on wind energy technology (August 18, 2010)

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.

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