Illustration by Phil Couzens
When it comes to saving energy, Japan has a lot to teach other industrialized countries. The resource-poor nation was swept up in energy conservation fever right after the oil shocks of the 1970s, and managed to quickly turn into one of the world’s “green” role models.
America, for example, leads the world in renewable energy capacity (in absolute terms), but has had trouble keeping pace. By some measures, Japanese companies use half as much energy per dollar of economic activity when compared with their counterparts in the U.S.
An average American household consumes about twice as much energy as a Japanese home. Despite its large economy, energy-thrifty Japan holds a respectable fifth place in the UN carbon dioxide emissions ranking (trailing the United States, China, Russia and India).
These numbers don’t come out of nowhere. Living in a country with no domestic sources of fossil fuel, many Japanese people are wired to save energy from birth. Japan’s companies, though not completely ecologically sin-free, have been churning out eco-friendly products for decades, backed by relatively green-minded governments. And of all the clean technologies available, solar energy and electric vehicles are increasingly being thrust before the public eye.
Last year, the government singled out these sectors as especially critical to staying on the path to achieving a low-carbon-emission society. Japanese households are promised handsome incentives when installing solar panels at home or purchasing an electric car. Consequently, the country’s biggest corporations have been pouring a lot of money into eco-innovations in recent years. In general terms, Japan considers weaning itself off oil a collective, national mission.
In the solar energy space, however, domestic companies have been treading water in recent years. A case in point is Sharp. The company was the world’s biggest maker of solar panels a decade ago, but now ranks just fourth behind Q-Cells from Germany, Arizona-based First Solar and China’s Suntech. In terms of total solar power capacity, however, Japan still is the world’s number three, trailing Germany and Spain (in 2008, Japan produced almost twice as much solar energy as the U.S., which ranks fourth in the list).
Virtually every Japanese tech company has solar-related products in its portfolio, with Sanyo and Sharp leading the pack in terms of innovation. Take Sharp’s SH6230C, for example, a cell phone that’s partially powered by a tiny solar panel hidden under the lid. Released in Japan last year, the handset is already on sale in China and is scheduled for distribution in other international markets in the coming months.
Sharp also owns the bragging rights for the solar cell with the world’s highest conversion efficiency (36 percent). The cell can even withstand conditions in outer space, making it an option for powering satellites and other space applications one day.
Sanyo’s three-year “Sanyo Evolution Project” launched in 2005 and designed to turn the company into an environmentally friendly company worked so well that it now probably boasts the greenest image among all of Japan’s tech powerhouses. Some of Sanyo’s bestselling products today are rechargeable batteries, solar chargers and panels. The latest innovation from the company is a prototype solar cell, which is thinner than a human hair and flexible enough for use on uneven surfaces.
Electric vehicle development has been picking up steam in recent months as well, triggered by higher demand, a number of groundbreaking industry alliances and intensified research and development.
Toyota and Tohoku University, for example, are working on a graphite-free battery that allows electric cars to travel ten times farther than today. Toyota is also part of a consortium of 158 companies and organizations that focus on turning CHAdeMO (short for “charge and move”)—a charging system developed by Tokyo Electric Power— into a global standard for electric cars.
Another potential export hit is Sim-Drive, a four-motor vehicle backed by a total of 34 Japanese companies and municipalities, including Mitsubishi Motors and Isuzu Motors. Mass-production for the futuristic electric car, whose driving range (186km) is about twice that of current models, is scheduled to begin as early as 2013.
Japan is betting high on clean technologies. The government is expecting the solar sector alone to generate up to $105 billion of “economic benefits” in the year 2020 (up from the current $1 billion). But the road to a greener economy is littered with pitfalls. It’s not just that renewable power and most green products, i.e. electric vehicles, are still too expensive for mass adoption. Other countries are catching up rapidly in the green tech race as well.
Especially in China, conservation efforts are about to go into overdrive. According to a recent industry report, China spent $34.6 billion on clean energy in 2009, about forty times more than Japan and twice as much as the U.S. Using these figures as a yardstick, it seems the green sector in both Japan and America still has a lot of room for growth.
Dr. Serkan Toto is a Tokyo-based web industry consultant and writer for American online media network TechCrunch.
