INDUSTRY I ANALYSIS
renewable energy. Just before his resignation in August 2011, outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan signed a feed-in tariff (FIT) law that will guarantee returns for generators of power from solar PV, wind, small and medium-scale hydropower, geothermal, and biomass. The 15-year FIT takes effect in July 2012 and is intended to help Japan achieve its goal of 20 percent renewable power by 2020; its levels will be reviewed every three years to avoid the type of clean-energy bubble caused by FITs in Spain, Italy, and elsewhere. The new FIT should further boost Japan’s rebounding solar sector. Aided by the falling prices that have bolstered sales worldwide, domestic sales of solar PV in Japan soared 30.7 percent in 2011 to 1,296 MW, passing the gigawatt milestone for the first time, according to the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association.
Domestic PV manufacturing is expanding with the nation’s largest solar facility, Showa Shell Sekiyu-owned Solar Frontier’s Kunitomi plant in Miyazaki on the southern island of Kyushu, expected to reach full capacity of 900 MW sometime this year. Kunitomi is the largest thin-film, copper-indium-selenium (CIS) factory in the world. On the deployment front, industrial giants Mitsui and Toshiba are constructing Japan’s largest PV solar plant of 50 MW in Aichi Prefecture. Billionaire high-tech tycoon Masayoshi Son wants to finance and build 10 20-MW solar farms around the country. The most ambitious plan of all comes from MEMC Electronic Materials’ SunEdison unit, which wants to deploy 1,000 MW of PV across the country in the next five years; it is seeking investors for the project estimated at $4.6 billion.
Growth of wind power in Japan has slowed in recent years, but the FIT and new sense of urgency has potential to change that. After the earthquake and tsunami, several press reports detailed how wind energy “rode to the rescue” in replacing unavailable nuclear power; none of Japan’s wind farms, including the 14- MW Kamisu offshore wind farm in the tsunami zone, had to go offline after the disaster. Offshore wind holds the greatest promise in a small, densely populated island nation. In February 2012, a consortium led by trading giant Marubeni announced plans to install six 2-MW floating wind turbines off the Fukushima coast. If successful, the location could scale up to 80 turbines by 2020.
Japan also has great potential to grow its geothermal power industry. It has 18 geothermal plants (the oldest dating to 1966) with 540 MW total capacity and plenty of expertise, but it’s often focused overseas. Three Japanese companies control about 70 percent of the world market for geothermal generating equipment. Japan has a potential 80,000 MW of geothermal
Nuclear plant in Japan at night
capacity, according to the Earth Policy Institute, but much of it is located near hot springs (known as onsen) very important to Japanese cultural tradition. Resolving issues like that are among the many challenges Japan faces as it seeks to dramatically re-chart its energy course away from nuclear power in the 21st century.
Commercial Building Retrofits Reap Rewards Although supply-side energy sources like wind, solar, and biofuels attract the most attention in the clean-tech industry, improvements in efficiency represent perhaps the best opportunity to upgrade our energy system. In most instances, energy-efficiency measures still remain the cheapest source of power, averaging a cost of just 3.5 cents for each kWh saved in the U.S., according to the Edison Foundation’s Institute for Electric Efficiency. With buildings responsible for more than a third of energy use worldwide and accounting for up to 80 percent of carbon emissions in large urban environments, retrofitting the built environment has become priority number one for energy-efficiency advocates.
In the U.S. in particular, commercial buildings – which make up roughly one fifth of the nation’s annual energy consumption – have become a primary target. Most of America’s commercial buildings were built before 1990 and still use outdated, energy- inefficient technologies and building materials. This presents an opportunity to reduce energy costs by an average of 22 percent with energy-efficiency retrofits, says UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Market researcher Pike Research pegged the U.S. commercial building energy efficiency market at $5.6 billion in 2011, with expectations of growth to $20 billion by 2020. To jump-start building energy upgrades, President Obama in December 2011 announced $4 billion in combined federal and private-sector investment to improve efficiency over the next two years. The commitment is part of the Better Buildings Initiative, an effort to make America’s commercial and industrial buildings 20 percent more efficient in less than 10 years.
Simple weatherisation and lighting upgrades can provide quick and noticeable energy savings, but the real opportunity lies in “deep” retrofits which take a comprehensive wholebuilding system approach and can provide energy savings of around 50 percent, if not more. Perhaps the most prominent example of a large-scale deep retrofit is the green renovation of New York City’s iconic Empire State Building. This retrofit, when completed in 2013, is projected to cut energy use by 38 percent and save $4.4 million annually in energy costs, paying for itself in only three years.
In this collaborative effort by building service provider Johnson Controls, efficient window maker Serious Energy, and other partners including the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), notable energy saving measures include super-insulated refurbishing of the building’s 6,514 windows, heat-saving radiator insulation, increased daylighting availability, and improvements to lighting and climate control systems.
“Everything that we’re doing at the Empire State Building is about business, and bottom line, that’s the first and most important thing,” Anthony Malkin, president of building supervisor Malkin Holdings, told
GreenBiz.com in a 2011 interview. “We’re not about paying more to do something qualitatively different, we’re about market-ready solutions.”
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www.solar-international.net I Issue III 2012
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