Corporate Japan is making strides in sustainable development, slashing the use of lead and other toxic substances in industry, embracing solar energy and making biodegradable plastic out of sugar beets.
Automobiles and electronics, two of the sectors in which Japan floods the world with its goods, have in recent years been at the forefront of environmentally friendly production.
Japanese industry is responding both to the pressures from the Kyoto Protocol and to new anti-pollution directives in the EU, a key market.
The Kyoto treaty, which went into effect in February, obliges Japan to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent by 2008-2012 from the 1990 level.
The government is determined to comply and has publicly mulled imposing taxes to whip the world's second-largest economy into shape. But industry opposes the taxes -- and some companies have already gone ahead on their own to help Japan go green.
Electronics giant Fujitsu set out as its goal to cut back consumption of electricity, oil and gas by 25 percent in the year to March last year from 1990-'91 levels. It surpassed its own target with a reduction of 28.6 percent.
Another electronic powerhouse, Toshiba, has declared global warming "an environmental issue of fundamental importance to our existence on the planet" and set out targets in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.
Toshiba, which also makes nuclear reactors, has asked its factories and laboratories to cut back emissions by 25 percent between 1990-'91 and 2010-'11. As of 2003-'4, Toshiba has managed a drop of 10 percent.
"I know that Japan is ahead in both its thinking and achievements in this field," Thierry Desmarest, the CEO of the French oil group Total, told a French-Japanese forum on sustainable development on March 28 in Tokyo.
"Among industrialized countries, Japan is the leader both in saving energy and in energy efficiency," he said.
The Japanese government finances projects for a greener economy under the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), part of the powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, with a budget of US$2.274 billion in the year which ended last month, of it US$1.495 billion for research and development.
Japan has made sustainable development the principal theme of the 21st century's first World Exposition, the six-month international exhibition which began in late March in a forest park of central Aichi province.
NEDO is using the Expo to show off some of its eco-friendly technology, including a power generation system based on fuel cells and solar energy which runs the host country's pavilion.
The Expo is taking place in the fiefdom of Japan's largest company Toyota Motor, which was the world's first automaker to use bioplastics for interior parts of its vehicles.
It has set up a factory which will each year produce 1,000 tonnes of plastic whose base is partly sugar beets, which makes the material biodegradable and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. The idea behind the factory is not only the automobile supply line but any sector which is interested.
Toyota and its competitor Honda were among the first to make fuel-cell cars which run on hydrogen and methanol and whose sole waste is water vapor, even though the production of hydrogen still causes greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, Japan has more than 292,000 vehicles which run on natural gas, according to a Japanese vehicle inspection association.
Japan is also by far the leader in solar energy, last year accounting for more than 51 percent of world photovoltaic cell production in terms of electrical power measured in megawatts, according to the US-based specialized publication PV News.
Japan's Sharp was number one for the fifth year in the solar energy production at 27 percent of the world's photovoltaic production, with fellow Japanese firm Kyocera coming in second, according to the journal.
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
On Ireland’s blustery western seaboard, researchers are gleefully flying giant kites — not for fun, but in the hope of generating renewable electricity and sparking a “revolution” in wind energy. “We use a kite to capture the wind and a generator at the bottom of it that captures the power,” said Padraic Doherty of Kitepower, the Dutch firm behind the venture. At its test site in operation since September 2023 near the small town of Bangor Erris, the team transports the vast 60-square-meter kite from a hangar across the lunar-like bogland to a generator. The kite is then attached by a
Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準精密), a metal casing supplier owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday announced plans to invest US$1 billion in the US over the next decade as part of its business transformation strategy. The Apple Inc supplier said in a statement that its board approved the investment on Thursday, as part of a transformation strategy focused on precision mold development, smart manufacturing, robotics and advanced automation. The strategy would have a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), the company added. The company said it aims to build a flexible, intelligent production ecosystem to boost competitiveness and sustainability. Foxconn
Leading Taiwanese bicycle brands Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械) and Merida Industry Co (美利達工業) on Sunday said that they have adopted measures to mitigate the impact of the tariff policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The US announced at the beginning of this month that it would impose a 20 percent tariff on imported goods made in Taiwan, effective on Thursday last week. The tariff would be added to other pre-existing most-favored-nation duties and industry-specific trade remedy levy, which would bring the overall tariff on Taiwan-made bicycles to between 25.5 percent and 31 percent. However, Giant did not seem too perturbed by the
RSS