For ten years, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has produced annual Emissions Gap Reports¹, tracking the difference between where global greenhouse gas emissions are heading and where they need to be for the world to get on track to keeping global warming within the limits agreed by countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).Read More

One important outcome from the 4.0 Industrial Thinking era brings up systems-to-systems approach integration, embracing cyber-physical systems (CPS), the internet of things (IoT), industrial internet of things (IIoT), cognitive computing and artificial intelligence. If a single key word could epitomize what we are facing, it would be the Market Transformation era.Read More

The current use of wind and photovoltaic generation pose several challenges to their increasingly strong penetration (ref 1 and 2). The use of energy resources that do not generate CO2 emissions is becoming increasingly important. The idea of green hydrogen, produced by electrolyzers fed with electricity from renewable sources, which by burning generates water, is more compelling today considering the new needs of the electrical power systems with the explosion of wind and solar generation, taking care of its possible multi-sector uses as well.Read More

Five megatrends (5Ds) will bring about changes to the Japanese power/energy business. These changes are inevitable and irreversible. We call them the 5Ds and they are:

• Deregulation
• Decentralization
• Decarbonization
• Digitilization
• Depopulation

Depopulation is the trend that Japan will likely face earlier than the rest of the world, while the other 4Ds are global megatrends.Read More