On Monday, Japanese auto giants and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) joined forces to set up a common system to recharge electric cars, with the hopes to create a global standard.

The growth of the electric vehicle sector has brought questions over whether zero-emission cars or the networks of recharging stations should come first.

Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors and Fuji Heavy Industries have linked up with TEPCO to organize “CHAdeMO.”

The name comes from the words “Charge” and “Move” and a pun on the popular Japanese phrase.

There are 158 companies and government bodies that are members, including 20 foreign firms.

TEPCO chariman Tsunehisa Katsumata said standardizing charging infrastructure is vital to making electric cars popular.

“We need to make this protocol a standard protocol outside of Japan,” he told a gathering in a Tokyo hotel.

Read the rest of the story: Japan Companies Team Up For Standard On Electric Cars

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Greenpeace Japan Nuclear Protesters

The first delivery of at least 850 canisters of high-level radioactive vitrified waste arrived Tuesday morning by ship from the U.K. in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, where it will sit in storage for decades before being buried deep underground. Antinuclear activists argue that with no local government yet willing to host a final disposal site and concern over the international security and environmental risks of transporting so much nuclear waste between the U.K. and Japan, the shipments should end.

Read the rest of the story: Shipment of nuclear waste arrives from U.K.

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Major electronics maker Toshiba is getting serious about the rooftop solar game, with plans to resell highly-efficient photovoltaic panels made by Bay Area-based SunPower. The two companies just struck a supply deal for 32 megawatts worth of panels in 2010 — enough to power as many as 32,000 homes.

The contract is significant for two reasons. Not only is it expanding SunPower’s global footprint and broadening its portfolio of projects, it also signals increased interest in solar energy in Japan, where Toshiba hopes to launch its residential solar business on April 1. Delivering technology made by third-party vendors, it aims to corner 10 percent of the domestic market by 2013.

With the country’s government setting ambitious quotas for renewable energy production and establishing a generous feed-in-tariff and subsidies for households installing solar systems, the market is expected to explode in the next several years.

Toshiba’s decision to go with SunPower makes a lot of sense in context. The public company is one of the most formidable makers of rooftop solar systems in the U.S., to be sure, but it’s really set apart from its competitors by the efficiency of its products. The company has achieved efficiency rates as high as 22 percent (meaning 22 percent of the light captured is actually turned into electricity). Average efficiences for other photovoltaic panels hover between 9 to 11 percent.

Japan isn’t exactly well-suited for solar. There is limited empty, flat roof space, and the sun doesn’t shine as intensely as it does in places like Arizona and Latin America. For these reasons, super high-efficiency panels are an obvious choice, even if they are more expensive than some other offerings.

Read more of the story: Toshiba joins Japan’s solar sprint with 32-MW SunPower deal

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The new affordable, sporty hybrid Honda CR-Z is all set to go on sale in Japan.

CR-Z is short for “Compact Renaissance Zero”…and your guess is as good as mine on the name, but Honda is aiming the car at the younger generation, who want to go for a “green” car with a bit of flair and oomph. So what’s in a name? The car will go on sale in Japan today and in the United States and Europe by midyear.

Honda Motor Co. announced on Thursday that “the Japanese price would be 2.268 million yen ($25,300) for the basic model and 2.498 million yen ($27,900) for the top-end model”.

The company claims that the CR-Z gets 25 kilometers per liter (58.8 miles per gallon).

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Japan opposes plans to list the Atlantic bluefin tuna, which is highly prized in sushi and sashimi, as a most-endangered species and to ban its international trade, an official said on Monday.

The UN-backed wildlife trade agency supports a call to stop cross-border trade in the fish when 175 member nations to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meet next month in Doha, Qatar.

Marine wildlife experts say that, despite fishing quotas, bluefin tuna stocks have plunged by 80 percent in recent decades in the Western Atlantic and Mediterranean, threatening the predator species with extinction.

Japan will not join in any agreement to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna under the United Nations treaty on endangered species, the country’s top fisheries negotiator said.

The negotiator, Masanori Miyahara, said in a telephone interview this week that Japan “would have no choice but to take a reservation” — in effect, to ignore the ban and leave its market open to continued imports — if the bluefin tuna were granted most-endangered species status.

“It’s a pity,” he said, “but it’s a matter of principle.”

Read the rest of the story: NYTIMES and AFP

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According to the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Japanese Scientists from Tokyo University have invented a substance dubbed, “Elastic Water”. The substance is obtained by adding two grams of clay and a small quantity of organic matter into water. This new substance is jelly-like and is considered proper for usage in medicine for sticking tissues together as it is 95% water.

The study period is scheduled to end in September 2010, if the scientists can succeed in increasing the density of the substance, it can be used to produce ecologically sound plastic materials.

A report has already been published in the latest issue of “Nature”.

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Anyone who’s had their laptop or cellphone run out of juice at a crucial moment can attest to the limitations that present power storage methods have on technology, but a product from Aqua Power Systems Japan may indicate an amazing new advancement: the water-powered battery.

At their present capability, NoPoPo (No Pollution Power) Eco batteries have enough power to save lives during a disaster since they can run on the smallest amount of fluid (drinkable or bodily), which means that someone lost in the woods or trapped under rubble could recharge their flashlight easily with a few drops of whatever is available.

But don’t start pouring water on your laptop just yet: For the time being, NoPoPo batteries have significant limitations — just the double-A form is available and can only run low-powered items like flashlights and toy trains (see video above) but if they find a way to expand capacity, the NoPoPo could revolutionize how – and for how long – we work and communicate on electronic devices.

Source: Japan Pulse

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Seeking to turn an environmental problem into an economic opportunity, high-tech companies in resource-poor Japan are mining mountains of toxic e-waste for precious materials.

One model project, the sprawling Panasonic Eco Technology Center, sits in lush rice fields an hour’s drive outside of Osaka city.

Inside, workers and humming machines disassemble flat-panel televisions, refrigerators and air conditioners, sorting their metal and plastic components into boxes for recycling.

About 90 percent of dismantled parts are reused in one way or another, says Yutaka Maehara, a manager at the plant.

Among the most precious parts are metals such as copper that are becoming more expensive on the world market, while the plant also isolates toxic components such as heavy metals and dangerous gases.

The plant aims to leave a minimal environmental footprint and to be a good neighbour in its quaint rural setting.

“In the beginning residents here had some concerns,” said Panasonic spokeswoman Kyoko Ishii. “But as you see, we’ve been operating the plant without polluting the water and the rice is growing without problems.”

Japan has come a long way since the 1950s, 60s and 70s when it emerged at breakneck speed as Asia’s economic engine room, boosting living standards but often at a devastating environmental cost.

The skies over Tokyo, Yokohama and other industrial centres then were often choked with pollution, in the way those over parts of China are today, while waterways darkened with industrial effluent.

Since then Japan has tightened many emission standards and other safeguards and launched in 2001 a recycling system that separates paper, glass and aluminium cans from household rubbish that can be incinerated.

Today people who want to dispose of electronic appliances have to pay an average of 28 dollars for a washing machine, 32 dollars for a TV set and 54 dollars for a fridge, according to the industry ministry.

The volume of garbage dumped in landfills every year has shrunk to roughly one third of 1990 levels.

Used mobile phone handsets and digital cameras are now often called ‘city mines’ for the precious metals they contain, such as gold, silver and copper.

The government recently launched a campaign to encourage cellphone users to return their old handsets to mobile phone companies for recycling.

One pioneer in Japan has been camera maker Canon, which started recycling toner cartridges from its printers about 20 years ago and now reuses 90 percent of the components of its photocopiers.

“Our system is closed loop recycling, which means used parts from our products are used again in our products,” said Tomonori Iwashita, the executive officer in charge of Canon’s environmental policy.

“Because we are a corporate entity, we don’t make recycling efforts unless it is useful for our business. If you can recycle cheaply and reduce the burden on the environment then that’s good for your business too.”

But despite manufacturers’ efforts to go green, some disposal companies still dump dangerous materials, said Tetsuya Sekiguchi, an activist who has joined several residents’ lawsuits against waste landfills.

“I’ve been working on the problems of garbage pollution for decades, but the situation of illegal dumping has not improved a bit as there are few conscientious recycling companies,” he said.

Another challenge is “the impact of economic globalisation on the recycling industry,” said Yuichi Moriguchi, head of the waste and recycling research centre at the National Institute for Environmental Studies.

“Asian countries, led by China, are absorbing Japanese waste materials and thereby causing a shortage of materials for the Japanese recycling industry” which has the most sophisticated technologies, Moriguchi said.

Because of very basic and dangerous extraction methods — for example by burning the plastic off metal parts in the open — waste from Japan often causes health and environmental problems in other Asian countries, he said.

“We need to build an international system of recycling” so that Japan’s technologies can be fully utilised, Moriguchi said.

In the long term, he said, “it’s important to seek materials made from sustainable resources, such as plants, with less energy and less pollution … because relying on limited resources such as petroleum will bring trouble in the future”.

Canon and synthetic fibre maker Toray Industries Inc. have jointly developed a high quality plastic made from corn, which has been used in keyboards and components of its office machines.

“Even though it is made from corn, its fire resistance is about the same as that of conventional plastic,” Iwashita said.

To expand research into sustainable materials, he said, Canon needs other companies, including major materials manufacturers, to come on board.

“We can’t do it alone,” he said. “We have to work as a wider group.”

Source: AP

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A technical tie-up between Toyota Motor Corp. and Mazda Motor Corp. in the field of hybrid vehicles is likely to be of greater benefit to Mazda, which lags behind in developing eco-friendly automobiles.

Mazda could eventually try to further strengthen its ties with Toyota by using Toyota auto parts and taking other measures in the aftermath of Ford Motor Co., Mazda’s largest shareholder, reducing its ratio of Mazda’s shares.

Mazda has prioritized improving the mileage of gas-powered engine vehicles, but these measures alone are not enough to secure the company’s business prospects.

It has already raised 60 billion yen for eco-vehicle research and development through increasing its capital by offering new stocks to the public.

With the tie-up, Mazda will be able to fulfill all the requirements for developing hybrid vehicles.

However, as eco-car manufacturing has seen a sharp increase in the auto industry worldwide, the market could be dominated by other automakers by 2013, when Toyota begins fully supplying Mazda with the key components of hybrid vehicles. Late starter Mazda will therefore be forced to play catch-up.

Meanwhile, Toyota predicts that it will suffer a 350 billion yen deficit for the consolidated financial settlement for the business term ending in March 2010.

Toyota may seek to quickly boost its business profits and cut the costs of manufacturing the key components for its own hybrid vehicles by producing more of the components for Mazda.

Photo by beve4

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Japan said Wednesday it would offer 1.75 trillion yen (19.5 billion dollars) to developing nations under a climate deal, offering a major boost to the summit in Copenhagen.

The figure amounts to more than half of the money as part of a plan to assist developing nations, a key sticking point at the 194-nation conference in the Danish capital.

“Japan as a country takes very seriously its responsibility in the international community,” Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa told reporters.

“Japan has decided today that we will provide financial assistance to developing nations of approximately 1.75 trillion yen including public and private finances,” he said.

Ozawa said that Japan was making the pledge “all on the premise that a fair and effective international framework should be built and that this framework should involve all major countries.”

He said that 1.3 trillion yen would come in public funds, with the rest consisting of private money in the world’s second largest economy.

Ozawa gave the dollar figure of 15 billion for the pledge, although it comes to 19.5 billion with the current strength of the Japanese currency against the greenback.

It marks the biggest contribution yet to the so-called fast-track fund aimed at helping developing nations cope with climate change through 2012.

It tops the pledge by European leaders to provide 7.2 billion euros (10.6 billion dollars). The United States has said it is ready to pay a “fair share” but President Barack Obama has not yet announced any figure.

Ozawa said the funding would include mitigation efforts and the development of low-carbon technology, along with adaption by small island states.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s left-leaning government has ramped up pledges by Japan to battle global warming and to find a successor to the landmark Kyoto Protocol negotiated in the Asian power’s ancient capital.

Japan earlier said it would also take part in a six-nation, 3.5 billion-dollar fund to address deforestation, a major source of climate change.

Photo by Greenpeace Finland

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