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U.S. &
JAPAN:
CLEAN ENERGY TECHNOLOGY
Team Stock Hop
Economy of U.S. & Japan
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U.S. has the largest national economy in the world.
Its nominal gross domestic product (GDP) was estimated at
$14.2 trillion in 2009, which is about three times that of the
world's second largest national economy, Japan.
The U.S. is the largest energy consumer in terms of total use.
Currently, the U.S. invests slightly more money in clean energy
research and development than Japan.
However, Japan is aggressively challenging the U.S. for
economic dominance in the global clean technology industry.
The U.S. is behind Japan in the production of solar PV cells, but
the U.S. is ahead of them in nuclear and wind power.
U.S. Recovery Act
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On February 17, 2009 President Obama signed the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery
Act)
 Stimulus
Package
 $36.7 billion went towards the Department of Energy
 Specifically,
$16.8 billion towards Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy
Energy Supply in the U.S.
Petroleum
37.1%
71% Transportation
23% Industrial
5% Residential and Commercial
1% Electric Power
Natural Gas
23.8%
3% Transportation
34% Industrial
34% Residential and
Commercial
29% Electric Power
Renewable Energy
7.3%
11% Transportation
28% Industrial
10% Residential and
Commercial
51% Electric Power
Coal
22.5%
8% Industrial
<1% Residential and
Commercial
91% Electric Power
Nuclear Electric Power
8.5%
100% Electric Power
Energy Supply in Japan
Oil
42.56%
Coal
22.46%
Natural Gas
18.34%
Hydro
3.20%
Nuclear
12.02%
Other Renewable
Energy
1.42%
Advanced Batteries
Advanced Vehicles and Batteries –Involves the market for
hybrid, plug-in and electric vehicles.
 The vehicles are working to advance energy-efficient
transportation methods while using environmentally friendly
fuels.
Advanced Batteries
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Currently, the average hybrid battery costs in the
neighborhood of $3,000 and if not mistreated have
a life expectancy of approximately 150,000 miles.
Advanced Batteries: U.S.
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Hybrid sales have increased 2.8% this past year
and in the first 9 months of 2009, 221,000 hybrid
vehicles were sold.
 Japanese
car company, Toyota, supplied over 65% of
the U.S. hybrid market.
Advanced Batteries: U.S. cont.
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Recovery Act
 Will
distribute $2.4Billion of funding to 48 new
advanced battery and electric drive projects.
 Will create tens of thousands of jobs in the United
States, North Carolina expecting to create several
hundreds alone.
 Michigan will receive approx. $10Million to create
educational, workforce training programs to prepare
people for the switch to hybrid and electrical vehicles.
Advanced Batteries: U.S. cont.
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The United States Advanced Battery Consortium
(USABC) is made up of Chrysler, Ford Motor
Company, and General Motors in collaboration with
the United Stated Department of Energy.
They are trying to produce a more reliable,
cheaper, longer lasting hybrid battery for vehicles.
Advanced Batteries: U.S. cont.
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OM Group, a specialty chemical provider, has
signed a definitive agreement to invest $171.9
million in EaglePicher, the leader in designing and
manufacturing batteries, to further develop the
lithium ion.
EaglePicher recorded approximately $125 million
in revenues in 2009. Of the $125 million, 31%
came from the use of batteries in the aerospace
industry.
Advanced Batteries: Japan
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In May of 2009, 21,601 hybrid units were sold;
making up 12% of new light-duty vehicle sales.
In July of 2009, 30,000 more hybrid units were
sold in Japan.
Advanced Batteries: Japan cont.
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Daimler AG, Japan’s second largest maker of luxury
autos have been working on making their vehicles
more energy efficient and also have been
experimenting with battery/electric cars. Currently
they have a state of the art Lithium-Ion battery that
contains over 200 battery cells. This Lithium-Ion
battery can power a standard 4 door car 500
kilometers (311 miles) on a single charge.
Advanced Batteries: Japan cont.
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A company called Better Place has realized the
need for maintenance stations for battery and
electric powered vehicles.
Demonstrated the first “battery swap station”
located in Japan.
Time for swap from start to finish at 40 seconds.
Typical customer a battery swap would take
roughly 1 minute and 20 seconds depending on the
car and battery.
Wind Power
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Converts wind energy into a useful form of energy by
using wind turbines to make electricity.
Currently an important part of the current global
power supply and is growing rapidly, having doubled in
the three years between 2005 and 2008.
During 2009 alone, $63 billion worth of wind turbines
were installed globally, a 31% increase, putting the
global wind capacity at 157.9 gigawatts (GW),
equivalent to roughly 1.5% of the global electricity
usage.
Considered a clean, reliable energy source that is quick
to install.
Wind Power cont.
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The current wind power capacity produces 340 TWh
[terawatt-hours] of clean electricity and saves 204
million tons of CO2 every year, helping to reduce
pollution and prevent escalation of global warming.
Around half a million people are now employed by the
wind industry around the world.
Wind power also has a low marginal cost due to
negligible fuel costs and relatively low maintenance
costs.
For a preexisting wind turbine, the marginal cost is
usually less than 1 cent per kilowatt-hour.
Wind Power: U.S.
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For the past decade, wind power capacity has
increased by an average of 35% each year.
By 2008 they surpassed Germany as the highest
wind energy producing country in the world.
In 2009, the U.S. installed an additional 10,000
MW of capacity, breaking all previous records,
bringing total capacity to over 35 GW.
Wind Power: U.S. cont.
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The power generated from wind turbines can:
 power
the equivalent of 9. 7 million homes
 avoid an estimated 62 million tons of carbon
dioxide annually (equivalent to taking 10.5 million
cars off the road)
 conserve approximately 20 billion gallons of water
annually, which would otherwise be consumed for
steam or cooling in conventional power plants
Wind Power: U.S. cont.
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Reason for the growth in 2009, despite the
state of the economy during the recession, is
due to the Recovery Act
It gave $93 million to wind energy projects
 Spurred the growth of construction, operations and
maintenance, and management jobs, which helped
save and create jobs in those sectors
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Wind Power: Japan
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Japan is currently ranked 13th worldwide for its
wind capacity at 2,059 MW.
Greatly falling behind the United States due to:
 Geography
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Typhoons & lightening strikes have caused severe damage to
wind turbines
 Lack
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of Incentive
Government passed the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)
law in April 2003 but it set very low targets for renewable
energy compared to other countries and provided no incentive
for growth
Solar Power
Solar Power - the generation of electricity from sunlight.
 This can be direct as with photovoltaics (PV), or indirect as with
concentrating solar power (CSP), where the sun's energy is
focused to boil water which is then used to provide power.
 A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell (PV), is a device that converts
light into electric current using the photoelectric effect.
 Solar power has the potential to provide over 1,000 times
total world energy consumption in 2008, though it provided
only 0.02% of the total that year.
 If it continues to double in use every two to three years, or less,
it would become the dominant energy source this century.
Solar Power cont.
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Sun= several thousand times more energy per day than
we use.
Solar energy development dates back more than 100
years- Industrial Revolution.
Henri Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effectdeals with the production of electricity directly from the
sun.
Early photovoltaic applications were aimed more
towards sensing and measuring light (i.e. camera light
meters) than towards actually producing power.
Solar Power cont.
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Common solar panels- around 12 % effective,
around 4 times more productive than a few years
ago.
Still used in two forms: thermal and photovoltaic
Thermal- using the heat of the sun to heat water or
another working fluid, which then drives a turbine or
another piece of machinery, creating electricity
Photovoltaic- producing energy directly from the sun
with no moving parts
Solar Power cont.
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Ray Kurzweil predicts that solar power will scale up to produce all
of the energy needs of Earth’s people in twenty years.
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Kurzweil worked on the solar energy solution with Google cofounder Larry Page as a part of a panel of experts convened by
the National Association of Engineers.
Solar energy is an information technology, therefore subject to the
Law of Accelerating Returns.
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Also predicted the fall of the Soviet Union and the spread of the
internet and wireless access
deals with accelerating change and its effect of the rate of
technological progress throughout history
Kurzweil uses examples from the past to show that, once a form of
technology reaches some sort of barrier, a new technology will be
invented to help cross that barrier.
Solar Power: U.S.
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Pricing
 price
per watt peak- primary unit of measurement
 watt peak- watt output of a solar module as measured
under an industry standardized light test before the
solar module leaves the manufacturers facility
 high power band prices (power over one-hundred and
twenty-five watts)- have dropped from around $27 per
watt peak in 1982 to around $4 today.
 Other variables that will affect price: where you live,
how much power your household holds, whether you
buy the panels new or used, and how much sun your
property receives.
Solar Power: U.S. cont.
Recovery Act
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DOE will provide $117.6 million in Recovery Act funding to
accelerate widespread commercialization of clean solar
energy technologies across America.
Photovoltaic Technology Development ($51.5
Million)
DOE will expand investment in advanced photovoltaic
concepts and high impact technologies.
 The aim is to make solar energy cost-competitive with
conventional sources of electricity and to strengthen the
competitiveness and capabilities of domestic manufacturers.
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Solar Power: U.S. cont.
Recovery Act (cont.)
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Solar Energy Deployment ($40.5 Million)
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DOE will focus on non-technical barriers to solar energy
deployment.
Will include grid connection, market barriers to solar energy
adoption in cities, and the shortage of trained solar energy
installers.
Concentrating Solar Power Research and Development
($25.6 Million)
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This will focus on improving the reliability of concentrating solar
power technologies and
will enhance the capabilities of DOE National Laboratories to
provide test and evaluation support to the solar industry
Solar Power: Japan
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Leads the world photovoltaic energy market- 45% of
PV cells being manufactured.
Promotions- tax credits and subsidies for installation
costs
Expected to reduce the costs of photovoltaic systems by
an average of fifty percent over three to five years.
These incentives should prove to be exceptionally
appealing, because the cost of electricity in Japan is
nearly double what it is in the United States.
“Energy for the Desert”- large scale PV power systems
Solar Power: Japan cont.
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Solar Power in Space
 Solar
power systems in space- 2040
 plans to launch a satellite capable of generating one
million kilowatts per second, which would be the
equivalent to a nuclear power plant
 two giant solar power-generating wing panels
 aimed at producing electricity that will be sent back to
Earth in the form of microwaves, with a lower intensity
than those emitted by a mobile phone
Nuclear Power
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Nuclear power is energy which is produced with the
use of a controlled nuclear reaction.
Many nations use nuclear power plants to generate
electricity for both civilian and military use.
This form of energy is considered cleaner than fossil
fuels, such as coal.
Nuclear Power cont.
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In general, nuclear power is cost competitive with other forms
of electricity generation, except where there is direct access to
low-cost fossil fuels.
Fuel costs for nuclear plants are a minor proportion of total
generating costs.
In assessing the economics of nuclear power, fuel management,
waste disposal costs, and decommissioning are taken into
account. These are internal costs.
The cost of nuclear power generation declined over the 1990s
and into the new decade because of declining fuel, and
operating and maintenance costs.
Longer construction periods will push up financing costs.
Nuclear Power: U.S.
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The US is the world’s largest generator of nuclear power,
and accounts for more than 30% of global nuclear
electricity generation.
The US was a pioneer of nuclear power development.
It has 104 nuclear reactors currently in operation, which
account for almost 20% of all electrical output. Most of
these were built between 1967 and 1990.
US reliance on nuclear power has increased significantly
due to increases in the output of existing plants.
Nuclear Power: U.S. cont.
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The United States does not have any new nuclear plants
under construction, and hasn’t completed a new plant
since the 1970s. Since this time, the US industry
dramatically improved its safety and operational
performance.
However, 13 applications for 22 new reactors are under
review because interest in new nuclear plant construction
has grown.
Over $4 billion has been spent on new nuclear plant
development over the last several years and the industry
plans to invest nearly $8 billion to start new reactor
construction in 2012.
Nuclear Power: Japan
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Japan has had an active nuclear power program since
research began in 1954. Their first nuclear reactor went into
operation in 1970.
They have many new plants under construction or planned, so
nuclear power’s role in Japan’s energy future will increase in
the next 10 years.
Nuclear power accounts for around 30% of Japan’s electricity
and will continue to rely on nuclear power to contribute to the
nation’s electricity mix.
Currently, Japan has 53 nuclear power plants in operation and
has the 3rd largest installed nuclear capacity in the world,
behind the US and France.
Conclusions
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“The nation that leads the world in creating new
sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads
the 21st century global economy.”
- President Obama
As the economy stabilizes, the U.S. needs to continue
investments into clean energy technology, especially
into research and develop in order to compete
globally, as foreign countries like Japan continue to
grow its clean energy technology.
Conclusions cont.
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It should focus on alternative batteries/hybrids to
achieve the higher market levels that other countries
such as Japan have achieved.
In the long run, clean energy will benefit the
economy as it creates jobs and create new cost
effective markets.
It will help us gradually lower our dependency on
oil and prove to be reliable energy sources.
Questions?