As seen in Smart Grid, ICT technologies will have new market, CleanTech. The US ICT vendors have a lot of business opportunities in the Japanese market.

The Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) is a Japanese government organization for promoting mutual trade and investment between Japan and the rest of the world. In San Francisco recently it held a symposium on cleantech in Japan and the U.S. Because JETRO’s mission is to promote Japan as the country to do business with and to invest in, all the presentations portrayed:

These are two of the highlights:

• Japan Unisys (no longer affiliated with Unisys Corp. but retaining the name), a subsidiary of Mitsui and Co., works in three areas: home appliances, electric vehicle (EV), and eco-house. Their view is from EV to smart house and finally the smart community, as in the following:

• Unlike Japan Unisys, which is Japanese market–centric, Panasonic’s presence in the U.S. is pretty big—$8B in sales with 10,000 employees and 10 locations. They have been doing business in the U.S. for 50 years. Panasonic has a series of products that could be greener, but like Japan Unisys, they have an eco-house idea. In addition, Panasonic acquired Sanyo, which has the biggest share in batteries. The merger creates a large corporation—Panasonic’s 300,000 employees plus Sanyo’s 86,000 employees, with Panasonic’s $78B in sales plus Sanyo’s $9B.

Panasonic’s eco-house

A consultant emphasized the investment in the cleantech area by the Japanese government, as in the following:

He also showed who’s who in the cleantech area in the following:

• The director of KQED did a special piece on Japan’s cleantech. He said that Japan owns 40% of all cleantech patents, while the U.S. owns 12% of them. He also pointed out that fuel cells are big in Japan. Although it costs $30,000 to install one, the government subsidy brings it down to $15,000. His special piece can be seen here.
• A reporter from Nikkei said that cleantech information on Japan can be seen in his magazine here.

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		Electrical Efficiency Measurement for Data Centers
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Overall, it was a good conference, reaffirming that Japan is pushing to green home appliances and homes and promoting EVs.