Japan

Japan is deploying a 300b ($2.75b) yen venture to turn disaster-stricken Fukushima to a green-energy farm, with the project’s first solar plant scheduled to be launched in January 2020.

Korean conglomerate LG reports increasing demand for its high-efficiency PV products in key markets while Kyocera said its solar business is improving profitability. Panasonic posted a slight increase in sales for its PV segment, including solar manufacturing.

PV InfoLink analyzed the key markets of China’s big module manufacturers, as well as product trends, based on export statistics. According to trade figures, the nation’s module exports totaled 34.2 GW in the first half of 2019, up by more than 90% from the corresponding period of 2018. In a nutshell, overseas demand has been strong in 2019.

Japanese trading corporation Mitsui & Co has sold its interest in a 679MW portfolio of operational Canadian wind and solar to Canadian infrastructure management firm Axium.

Analyst WoodMac has spelled out the urgent need to decarbonize the global hydrogen production industry. While the fuel can offer a sustainable grid balancing act for intermittent renewables, in its current fossil-fuel driven form it is pumping out more than 800 tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year.

The Chinese company has announced it has acquired intellectual property rights pertaining to various applications of gallium-doped silicon wafers in solar cell applications from Japanese company Shin-Etsu Chemical.

American John B. Goodenough, Brit Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, from Japan, have received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing the lithium-ion battery. A statement from the Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden said the invention “laid the foundations of a society without wires and fossil fuels, and [they] are of great benefit to humanity”.

The decreasing costs of solar and wind energy could generate $71 billion in stranded coal assets in Japan by 2025, according to a new report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative, a financial think tank, and the University of Tokyo. Offshore wind power will be cheaper than coal in Japan by 2022, new solar cheaper by 2023, and onshore wind less expensive by 2025.

The Total Solar International PV unit of the French oil giant has started construction of a large scale plant in Osato, in the prefecture of Miyagi, Japan. With its third solar project in Japan, Total will reach 100 MW of installed generation capacity in less than two years.

Japan risks saddling its citizens with an inefficient, economically obsolete power fleet if it doesn’t rethink its current plans for a large-scale roll-out of new coal, experts have warned.

Recent investments into 11 GW of new coal generation capacity may result in reduced operating cashflows of $71 billion. That will occur, according to a report from the Carbon Tracker Institute, because solar and wind will become cheaper than coal in Japan by 2025 at the latest, despite high renewable energy costs at present.

The International Renewable Energy Association says the integration of hydrogen into the energy transition will not happen overnight and electrolysis costs will not be halved until the 2040s. That hydrogen and related products could revolutionize the world energy landscape, however, is not in doubt.

The Japanese electronics manufacturer said the EverVolt storage system is available in the U.S. market in AC and DC-coupled versions, with a storage capacity ranging from 5.7-34.2 kWh, depending on the model chosen.

Kyocera’s 13.7 MW floating project at the Yamakura Dam was damaged by 120mph winds the typhoon brought to the coastal city of Chiba. Firefighters said the blaze may have been generated by the strong heat produced by panels stacking up.

The Japanese multinational lender is making its second investment in the Swedish start-up. The funds will help the company ship its first products next year.