No. 64: Subsidy for the introduction of low-carbon equipment (November 25, 2010)

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will establish a new system to provide a subsidy to medium-sized companies that introduce equipment like a boiler capable of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The subsidy is proportionate to the emissions and scheduled to be 3,000 yen per ton that is about two times as much as the price for the international transaction. A medium-sized company gets the amount equivalent to the reduction of two years when it introduces the equipment. The government wishes to promote the introduction of low-carbon equipment and stimulate domestic economy simultaneously. It projects to create the investment effect of at least 30 billion yen and the reduction of carbon dioxide of about 500,000 tons for two years.

The equipment subject to the subsidy is such low-carbon equipment as city gas boiler and heat pump that has great effect on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. The current price of emission trading is about 1,500 yen per ton, and the government plans to set the price at 3,000 yen to stimulate investment will of medium-sized companies. If a company introduces a biomass boiler of about 10 million yen, it can get a subsidy of 1,200,000 yen because carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by 400 tons in two years. The government will aggregate the emission quotas purchased from medium-sized companies and put them together into large quotas for the sales to power companies and steelmakers.

Many large Japanese companies currently purchase emission quotas from China and East European countries, creating the problem of outflow of capital to foreign countries. Medium-sized companies account for about 13% of Japan’s total emissions, but many of them are hesitate to make an investment on environment because of heavy financial burden. The government wishes to play an interface role between big companies and medium-sized companies.

No. 63: Support business for the introduction of photovoltaic generation (November 24, 2010)

Several companies will start the support business for the introduction of photovoltaic generation. Mitsubishi UFJ Lease & Finance will start the lease business for large-scale photovoltaic generation equipment. The company will lease photovoltaic generation equipment with an output of several tens of kilowatts to help manufacturing plants introduce photovoltaic generation equipment. It wishes to increase the sales to several billions of yen in three years.

Taisei Corp. will begin construction support service of large-scale photovoltaic generation to be built in an ex-waste disposal site for local governments. The company is now accumulating know-how for selecting the most suitable construction method responding to the foundation strength and wind velocity in an ex-waste disposal site in Mie Prefecture. Although waste disposal sites usually cannot be diverted to other uses because of the legal constraints even if they are filled up, they are suitable for photovoltaic generation because they are big in area and sun-kissed. It will submit proposals of photovoltaic generation to local governments with emphasis on the cost-benefit performance.

Itochu Techno Solutions will launch the service to estimate electricity generated of photovoltaic generation equipment. The company estimates electricity generated on the basis of such factors as the amount of sunlight of the candidate site and examine the feasibility of construction projects planned by power companies. The service costs several hundreds of thousand yen per project.

Surplus power generated by photovoltaic generation equipment at homes and plants is currently purchased by power companies. The Japanese government examining the possibility of purchasing whole amount of electricity generated with a view to introducing a policy in 2012 at the earliest. The policy is expected to ask power companies to purchase sunlight energy generated for the purpose of generating electricity.

No. 62: A new biofuel comes to the Japanese market in 2013 (November 22, 2010)

A new biofuel jointly developed by BP of Great Britain and DuPont of the U.S. is scheduled to be introduced into the Japanese market in 2013. The new product is not easily mixed with water, and the existing gas stations can sell it without modifying the facilities. The two companies plan to market this product as the vehicle fuel following bioethanol. Called biobutanol, it is mainly made of sugarcane. They will provide the production know-how to companies currently producing bioethanl to expand the market worldwide. Biobutanol will be put on the U.S. market in 2012 under the brand name of Butamax, and subsequently will be put on the Japanese market in 2013.

Biobutanol produces fewer by-products in production than bioethanol, and it can shorten the production process considerably. In addition, it has higher energy density than bioethanol. The former has two thirds of energy amount per volume of gasoline, but the latter has more than 80% of energy amount per volume of gasoline. The two companies will produce butanol in Southeast or in Brazil and ship the finished products by sea. The energy amount consumed in production and transportation is small. It can satisfy the environmental standards required by the Japanese government, and it can be sold at nearly the same price as bioethanol per calorie.

Oil distributors put “bio gasoline” that contains a chemical compound of bioethanol called Ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE) on the market in 2007, and increased the number of sales bases to increase the sales volume to date. However, new capital investments are required to expand the production of ETBE. Amid the growing demand for larger production of ETBE, a new type of biofuel is expected to be in greater demand in the future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No. 55: Local medium-sized companies collaborate to develop electric vehicles (July 31, 2010)

In Japan, the move that local medium-sized companies work together to develop electric vehicles (EVs) is spreading. This is because medium-sized companies that once enjoyed brisk business as subcontractors of big companies have been losing business volume because of the big companies’ trend to transfer their manufacturing plants in Southeast Asian countries. A local company in Osaka Prefecture will build a trial three-seat three-wheeled EV by March 2011 for mass production scheduled for 2012. It will specialize in fabrication using imported chassis and battery. The planned EV is designed for short distant shopping only and not designed for driving on an express highway. It runs at the maximum speed of 35 km/h and for 70 km per about six-hour charge. The price is scheduled at between 1 and 1.5 million yen. A total of 23 medium-sized companies participate in the project. The competition in the EV development is growing harder, and big companies including Toyota are energetically developing EVs. It is, therefore, advisable for the group of medium-sized companies to focus on the zippy model positioned between car and bicycle because it is hardly possible to compete with big companies in EVs that replace the gasoline-powered vehicle. In addition, a facilitator from the third party, such as government agency and local municipality, is indispensable because each participant has its own interest. The price range should be between 1 and 1.5 million yen. It is advisable not to touch on the EV that costs more than 1.5 million yen, leaving the domain of such expensive EVs to big companies.

No. 54: Photovoltaic generation spreads among restaurants and convenience stores (July 30, 2010)

A nationwide coffee shop chain decided to install a photovoltaic generation system in its new shop to supply 5% of its power demand by photovoltaic generation and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The investment is three million yen, and it is scheduled to be recouped within 10 years. A nationwide restaurant chain introduced solar water heaters to reduce utility cost. Because restaurant chains are not as financially strong as nationwide major retail chains, they are behind in energy saving measures. However, it has become easier for restaurant chains to introduce photovoltaic generation, because the policy to ask electric power companies to purchase power at two times as high as in the past was enacted last fall and because an increasing number of municipalities provide a subsidy to companies that install a photovoltaic generation system. Convenience store chains are very energetic to install a photovoltaic generation system. Family Mart will increase the number of stores with the system from the present 10 stores to 300 stores by 2012, and Seven-Eleven plans to double the number of stores with the system to 200 by next spring. The Japanese government plans to increase photovoltaic generation by 20 times to 28 million kW toward 2020. Backed up by the inspiring government policy, the move to introduce photovoltaic generation is expected to intensify among restaurant and retail chains in Japan.

Office best suitable for biological clock

Takenaka Corp., one of Japan’s leading construction companies, has developed an office that minimizes the error of the biological clock that controls the cycle of brain activation. The office controls Takenaka’s self-developed intensity of illumination and room temperature, sets the biological clock of office workers, and helps them have a deep sleep. The company plans to commercialize this office in three years as the technology to improve the productivity of office workers liable to have an irregular working pattern. Focusing attention on the circadian rhythm, it developed the technology to select the intensity of illumination and control the operation of air-conditioning in accordance with the circadian rhythm.

Takenaka adopted two kinds of LEDs of orange and white. The office uses the two colors, but orange grows stronger toward the evening. It is 400 lx in the day time and less than 300 lx after the evening. The illumination is covered by film after the evening to integrate it with the ceiling, and the film makes the whole ceiling brighter by diffusing the light coming out through the film. The system sets the temperature of the air-conditioning at 3 degrees centigrade higher than the room temperature to increase the deep body temperature, thereby enlarges the vibration amplitude subject to the circadian rhythm. This technology helps office workers have a good sleep and improve their rhythm of sleep and waking state.

Hitachi Zosen goes into the large-scale fuel cell business.

Hitachi Zosen announced that it would go into the large-scale fuel cell business toward 2014 in alliance with Wartsila of Finland. The large-scale fuel cell to be built by the two companies will have power generation efficiency of 50-70% that is about two times as high as that of the existing model and sold to manufacturing plants and buildings. The company is scheduled to launch the testing machine of the state-of-the-art fuel cell called solid-oxide fuel cell within the year. It changed the substance used in generation part from polymer molecule to solid ceramic, and it is expected to increase the power generation efficiency to 50-70% and output of power generation by 10 times. The two companies will collaborate in product development and substantiative experiments. Fuel cells do not emit carbon dioxide, but the high generation cost should be solved to spread fuel cells. According to a survey, the current domestic solid-oxide fuel cell market is about 800 million yen, but it will be 250 billion yen in 2025.

Carbon fiber material for auto body

Tokyo University successfully developed a carbon fiber material for auto body jointly with Toray, Toyobo, and Mitsubishi Rayon. The newly-developed material has 10 times as much strength as iron and weighs one fourth of iron. It can be moulded in a short time, and it allows for deformation and agglutination. It can be applied to various part of a car including auto body and engine parts. The university will collaborate with Toyota, Nissan, and Honda to establish the mass production technology of this material. To develop this material, the university used carbon fiber and thermoplastic resin to solidify it and improved the surface of carbon fiber to make it become easily attached to resin. It took this new material only two minutes to be processed after it is moulded in a mold. If the processing is automated, it is supposedly possible to process this material in one minute that is the time used to produce a metal part of mass-produced cars. It will offer a wide range of applications including door frame and engine parts. In addition, it can be applied to other industries than the auto industry because you can purchase a block of this material and process it to build favorable shapes.

A new high-rise building with a recycling system

Takenaka Corp., one of Japan’s general constructors, will build a new high-rise building in Osaka. It will be Japan’s highest building when it is completed in 2014. It is 300 meters high and 60-storied, and it is equipped with a system to recycle food scraps and discharged water. Using pipes with a length of 400 meters, the system produces biogases from food scraps coming from restaurants inside the building and uses them for air-conditioning and hot-water supply. The company developed the urban biogas system in collaboration with an environment solution company. The recycling system sends food scraps produced by restaurants to the basement using the pipes and process them in the fermenter to make methane gases. And the gases will be used for the cogeneration system and boilers. The discharged water from hotel rooms and bathrooms will also be reused. The new building is scheduled to discharge three tons of food scraps daily, and the daily amount of discharged water is scheduled at 700 tons from restaurants and 550 tons from bathrooms. The biogas system will generate electricity equivalent to the amount consumed by 100 households. This self-contained building will supposedly grow widespread in the future.

On electric vehicle

Advanced countries agreed to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 in last year’s G8 Summit. Clearly, this is not a target that can be achieved easily. However, the two driving force are helpful to realize this difficult-to-achieve target. They are electric vehicle (EV) and photovoltaic generation. It is vital to restructure a society using these two technologies that have unlimited potential, and the restructuring asks consumer-electronics makers to expand their business domains. It may become a reality that the largest home electric appliance is an EV some time in the future.

Low entry barrier
There are about 60 million vehicles in Japan and more than 1 billion vehicles in the world today, and they all are supposed to be replaced by EVs in several decades. EVs can contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions if photovoltaic generation and wind generation are used for charging. In the days of gasoline vehicles, entry barrier is really high because lots of investments are needed for manufacturing plants and development costs. However, EVs do not large amount of investments, and venture companies and home electronics makers can find business opportunities. Tesla Motors in the U.S. succeeded in mass production of its roadster in 2008, just five years after the company was founded. Mounting a Japanese lithium iron battery, it has better acceleration than a Porsche.

Tesla’s innovation
Tesla achieved two innovations. First, they changed the structure of the auto industry from integration to assembling. Tesla roadster is assembled using parts coming from various parts of the world. The auto body comes from England, battery from Japan, and motor from Taiwan. And the roadster is assembled in California. Second, they established the combinatorial technology. Although they do not have their own elemental technology, they constructed an inexpensive and highly reliable battery system by developing the control technology using the general-purpose battery stored in a notebook PC. They also employed a general-purpose tri-phase current induction motor instead of a permanent magnet synchronous motor that uses an expensive scarce resource neodymium.

Competitors in the market
A Chinese battery maker and a Korean vehicle make also move into the EV market. Japanese automakers are also active, and Nissan is scheduled to launch its electric vehicle Leaf coming October. From a comprehensive viewpoint, Japanese auto makers excel the three companies mentioned above. It took Tesla two years to ship 1,000 roadsters, while late entrant Mitsubishi Motors needed only half a year to ship 1,000 EVs. Nissan plans to ship 50,000 Leaf EVs in the initial year. Actually, Nissan is most active in developing EVs. Nissan decided to invest US$1,700 million to build a new plant to produce batteries for its EV “Leaf.” Nissan already received 13,000 advance orders for Leaf. Toyota announced the capital and business alliance with Tesla Motors. Nissan believes that EVs will account for 10% of vehicles on the earth, saying that it costs US$50 to fill a gasoline tank of a standard car, but it costs only US$3 to charge an EV. The difference is enormous. Nissan announced that it opened up the way to develop a lithium ion battery that has two times as much capacity as the exiting product. It allows an EV to travel 300 km that is double the distance the existing car can cover in one charge.

Moves of Japanese home electronics makers toward electric vehicle
As contrast to auto makers, home electronics makers are somewhat quiet. Lithium ion battery is the most critical part of an EV. Japanese home electronics makers, such as Sanyo, Sony, and Panasonic, have an established position in the production of lithium batteries. Tesla admitted that it employs a Japanese lithium ion battery for its roadster, though it declined to disclose the name of the producer. It is vital to employ a highly reliable lithium ion battery to achieve success in the EV business. Home electronics makers seem to have great potential of success in finished EV production. No Japanese home electronics makers have branched out into EV production, but leading home electronics makers have been playing a leading role in the development of EV.

Panasonic supplies lithium ion batteries to Toyota’s plug-in hybrid EVs. It developed a new battery module that uses lithium ion battery in October 2009. This battery module contributes much to the increase of travel distance and reduction of the production cost of an EV. In November 2009, Sanyo made it public that it would commercialize the battery module that Panasonic developed. Sony is a leading lithium ion battery producer worldwide. The company once announced that it would not produce batteries for cars, but it has decided to produce batteries for EVs judging from the growing popularity of EVs. It will invest 100 billion yen to build the system for mass production. Sony is reportedly negotiating with several auto makers.

Hitachi does not build a completed car by itself, but it has been producing lots of auto parts. It first succeeded in producing domestic electronic components for cars for the first time in Japan in 1930. It expanded the auto-related business constantly, and span off the lithium ion battery production division in 2004. Hitachi has competitive edge in the production of power semiconductors and the ability to prepare in-house core parts and components for EVs.

Home electronic makers’ efforts to associate EVs with smart grid
Besides being involved in the EV business, home electronic makers can help conserve energy by constructing efficient equipment for transmission and transformation of electricity. The smart grid is to reform the power grid to be more efficient and decentralized using information technology and allow for energy exchange between households and power plants. That is, the concept of smart grid covers solar house, mega solar, wind generation, existing power plants, and small regional power plants for emergency use. Actually, lots of business opportunities are available for home electric makers. In this sense, EVs may be built by home electric makers in the near future. Auto makers and home electronics makers will compete in the EV market. Be alert! Competitors come in from the unforeseeable business arena.

Japanese wind generation plant goes to Thailand.

Japan Wind Development, Japan’s third largest wind generation company, will build a large-scale wind plant with an output of 180,000 kW in Thailand. The company will extend its know-how to the construction and give maintenance service after the plant is built. The new power plant will be built on the prairie 150 meters above sea level in eastern part of Thailand. The total investment will be about 40 billion yen, 20-40% of which will be paid by Japan Wind Development. The construction work will start in 2012 and part of the plant will be put into operation in 2013. As Japan’s biggest wind plant has an output of less than 80,000 kW, the plant to be built in Thailand is far bigger than the Japan’s biggest. It is also being planned to introduce a storage battery to stabilize the transmission amount. All electricity generated by the plant will be supplied to Thai power companies. In addition to the fee for providing technology, Japan Wind Development will receive profits coming from selling electricity on a pro-rata basis. Since Japan is a mountainous country, it is increasingly hard to find suitable places for wind generation, and wind generation is subject to environmental assessment. Actually, Japan Wind Development recorded a deficit of 2,200 million in 2009 due to the sluggish domestic wholesale power market. The Japanese government is scheduled to introduce a system in which electric power companies buy all electricity generated by wind at a certain price, but it is advisable not to reply on this optimistic move too much. As is often the case, the government may change the policy all of sudden. The key to the growth of the Japanese wind generation business totally depends on how wind generation companies can develop the foreign market.

Lead of a mechanical pencil to measure pollutants in water

An associate professor of Nihon Pharmaceutical University and an analytical equipment manufacturer in Tokyo successfully developed the method to measure the concentration of pollutants like arsenic contained in water and eliminated the necessity to use an expensive platinum electrode. Because the measurement cost is low, this method will be used in developing countries. They plan to put this method into practical use in three years. Because the lead is electricity-conducting and made of carbon with few impurities, the flow of electricity changes depending on the concentration of pollutants if it is put in dirty water. The method enabled them to measure arsenic of 5 micrograms per one liter. This is half the safety standard of arsenic concentration in drinking water specified by WHO. They confirmed that the method provides sufficient degree of precision to confirm the safety of water. An electrode made of metal such as platinum is expensive, and it costs much and requires great care to cleanse it for repeated usage. The lead of a mechanical pencil is inexpensive, and it does not need big equipment for measurement. This method can be used to measure adrenaline in pharmaceuticals and catechin in foods. This method is of great help to developing countries in short of clean water when it is put into practical use.

On carbon fiber

Market overview
Carbon fiber is one of the industrial products that allow Japan to maintain technology edge. The three producers, Toray Industries, Toho Tenax (formerly Toho Rayon and currently a Teijin’s subsidiary), and Mitsubishi Rayon account for about 70% of the world market. Western companies used to be dominant in the past because carbon fibers were in great demand for war supplies including jet fighters. Back then, there were as many as 15 producers worldwide, and Japanese companies were producing carbon fibers for sporting goods like golf clubs and tennis rackets.

The market changed drastically on the occasion of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Western companies withdrew from the carbon fiber business because of the rapid decline in military demand, and Japanese companies replaced the western companies. The three Japanese companies were in a favorable position because they all are fiber makers, whereas western companies were chemical companies without sufficient knowledge of fibers. Today, Toray has 27% share and Toho Tenax 21% share in the world market. Three Japanese companies are followed by Taiwan Plastics that produces only carbon fibers of a single grade for general purposes. Today, it is hardly possible to launch an artificial satellite without Japanese carbon fibers.

Technology
Though weighing only one fourth of iron, carbon fiber has 10 times as much strength and 7 times as much degree of elasticity as iron. The production method is very special. First, continuous fiber called precursor is produced, and the produced precursor is processed for thermal protection. The thermally-protected precursor is sintered and carbonized by inactive gases to produce carbon fibers. The basic production method is the same in every producer. Carbon fiber is closely related to environment concerns. Half of a Boeing 787 is made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic, and it has 20% higher energy efficiency than a passenger plane of the same class. Carbon fiber is growing popular in car production lately, though the application is limited only to high-end cars at present. Although CO2 is emitted in the production process of carbon fibers, but the amount to be eliminated by applying carbon fibers is much bigger.

Spreading usage
The usage of carbon fiber is spreading. As the wind generator grows bigger in size, carbon fiber is increasingly used for the center core of blades to make them stronger. As a big blade needs 1-2 tons of carbon fiber, the market is growing bigger. The market of carbon fiber for airplanes is estimated at 3,000 ton annually, while 3,000-4,000 tons of carbon fibers will supposedly be needed annually for wind generation in the future. A large amount of carbon fiber reinforced plastics will be used for Boeing’s next medium-sized airline B787, and Toray is Boeing’s leading supplier. Tenax is the leading supplier of Airbus that introduced A380 in 2007, about 30% of which is made of carbon fiber reinforce plastics ratio by weight.

Production cost, etc.
Greatly affected by the sluggish economy worldwide, Japan’s monthly production of carbon fiber decreased from 1,200 tons before the Lehman shock to 323 tons in March 2009. In addition, the production delay of Boeing 787s diminished demand and the glut created by overcapacity drove down prices. The market, however, recovered to 900 tons in October 2009 partly because of the diversified usage. Production cost is the most critical factor for spreading carbon fiber. It costs 10 times more than glass fiber and 100 times more than iron to produce carbon fiber. Various approaches are being conducted now. Under the current technology, only one ton of PAN (Polyacrylonitrile) carbon fiber is produced from two tons of precursor. To improve productivity, experiments are being conducted to change the base material from acrylic to another material.

At the same time, fabrication technology offers lots of room for improvement. Toyota’s Lexus scheduled to be introduced toward the end of 2010 uses carbon fiber for the constructional material of its driver’s seat. Toyota introduced new fabrication technology and shortened the production time of a driver’s seat to 10 minutes. However, it is necessary to shorten the production time from 10 minutes to 3 minutes if carbon fiber is used for popular cars. A breakthrough technology is required to spread carbon fiber as a general-purpose material.

Cope with the decreasing fuel oil consumption

Japan’s domestic fuel oil consumption decreased to less than 200 million kiloliters in 2009 for the first time in 22 years. To cope with the decreasing trend, leading oil distributors are busily occupied with branching out into new business fields related to solar cell. A subsidiary of Nippon Oil is scheduled to increase production of silicon wafers by 17% to 240,000 kilowatts in 2010 over the previous year. This company has a 10% share in the global market of highly-efficient silicon wafers for single-crystal solar cells. It currently produces silicon wafers between 170 and 200 micros, and it will introduce a new technology to produce even thinner silicon wafers using diamond to increase competitive edge. Idemitsu Kosan developed a polycarbonate resin that maintains the same strength even after exposure to sunlight and rain for 3,000 hours. The company plans to sell the newly-developed product as a protection material for relay amplifiers. The market of relay amplifiers is estimated to grow four times in 2013. Cosmo Oil is developing polycrystalline silicone using the low-cost mass production technology called zinc reduction method, and it is scheduled to put the technology into operation in 2012. Showa Shell is building a solar cell production plant with an annual production capacity of 900,000 kilowatts with an investment of about 100 million yen. It is quite natural that the fuel consumption will continue decreasing in Japan due to the fear of prolonged sluggish economy and concerns about environment protection. There is not much time left for oil distributors to develop alternative sources of revenue.

Packaging material for foods that virtually blocks oxygen

A Tokyo University professor developed a film with high degree of sealing capacity using plant-derived substances alone in collaboration with Nippon Paper and Kao. He applied bionanofiber solution thinly on the surface of a 30 micro thick starch-derived polylactic acid film. Polylactic acid film without the application of bionanofiber easily allows oxygen to permeate and does not have enough strength. By applying a bionanofiber layer as thin as 0.8 micro on the polylactic surface, he successfully blocked oxygen as much as an existing packaging material made of oil. Fibers are usually in the state of a thick bundle in a plant. He created bionanofibers by dissecting out a bundle into nearly uniform ultrafine fibers, each of which is about 4 nanometers wide. It is possible to economize raw materials because each of the fiber is ultra fine, and polylactic acid can maintain transparency even if bionanofiber is applied on its surface. He plans to put this technology into practical use in a few years and use it for the display film of LCD TVs. He estimates that the price of the ultrafine fiber will be less than 500 yen per kilogram if pulps produced in the paper-forming process are used for the production.