Nissan Motor Co. announced on Monday that it is planning to mass-produce automotive lithium ion batteries in Portugal come 2012. About the same time, Nissan intends to manufacture electric vehicles globally at full clip.

Nissan has signed an agreement with the Portuguese government to construct a plant. Nissan will be the first Japanese automotive firm to produce next-generation batteries overseas.

They will supply lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles for its own cars and its French partner, Renault SA. Nissan will start rolling out electric vehicles next year in Japan and the U.S. global mass production will begin in 2012.

Terms are still being hammered out. In the meantime, there are lots of Portugese studying Japanese hoping for a job. And, Nissan is making progress toward cutting emissions in its cars.

Source (sub req)

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Hitachi Lighting Ltd. in April has plans to mass produce high-efficiency fluorescent lights which use up to 50% less power than present fluorescent bulbs.

The Hitachi Ltd. group company has invested Y 1 billion ($10 million) to install production equipment at its plant in Ome, Tokyo. The company has plans to release some 10 models this fiscal year.

Hitachi’s high-efficiency lights will last 20,000 hours, almost two times that of existing products.

Hitachi will target convenience stores, factories and large commercial facilities.

It’s always about the money.

The company expects the market for environmentally friendly lighting to grow because of fiscal 2009 revisions to the energy conservation laws.

Hitachi Lighting with its high-efficiency lighting business is going head-to-head against many companies in the lighting industry that are putting therir efforts into LED lighting. Hitachi thinks its option is the more practical one.

King Bauduin Base was closed some forty years ago.

On Feb. 15th Belgium inaugurated Princess Elisabeth Base - a scientific research station that combines high-end technologies and a total respect for the environment.

The base is a zero-emission station. It was built entirely during the International Polar Year, which was, well, um, I don’t know when it was. How come these International Years happen and nobody knows?

Still, kudos to Belgium for setting up shop at the bottom of the world and doing it with minimum harm now and in the future to the environment.

The Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB)  says $100+ million will be saved every year when Filipinos start using energy-efficient lights.

ADB will fund the energy-efficiency project in the Philippines by giving away 13 million energy-saving lights to homeowners and businesses with the government’s backing to cut the nation’s power bills.

ADB has approved a $31.1 million-dollar loan to the Philippines government for the Philippine Energy Efficiency Project.  Compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) will be distributed to customers nationwide in exchange for their incandescent bulbs. Each CFL will save customers 400 pesos ($8.50 dollars) a year for the next 7 to 10 years. GP wonders why this isn’t happening in every country in the world.

The project will fit government office buildings and public lighting systems with efficient lighting options also as well as establish an energy service company for financial and technical suppor.

Just 20 percent of the electricity used by regular light bulbs produce light. The rest produces heat. A CFL uses all of its electricity input to produce light.

The average incandescent bulb lasts about 800 hours. CFLs will have a life expectancy of 10,000 hours and 2-year warranty to boot.

Tell me again why this isn’t happening in every country.

Japan will launch an in-depth survey – a real in-depth survey as in heading deep into the sea – to look for rare metal deposits, the kind used in high-tech products. Japan will start digging in the seabed surrounding the country this year says Tokyo.

The plan is for the marine project to help Japan enhance the country’s capacity to secure energy and mineral resources, like oil, natural gas and methane hydrate.

Methane hydrate is an ice-like compound that burns. Japan wants to carry out a full-scale extraction in or after fiscal 2018.

Next up…the debate for/against off shore digging.

It’s not going to happen in/near California. Gotta keep those Puffins happy.

If only we could harness the Martian methane belch…

There was a surprising and mysterious belch of methane gas on Mars NASA says. NASA thinks there might be microbial life underground, but admitted the gas could come from changes in rocks. Methane gas on earth is by far mostly a byproduct of life — animal digestion and decaying plants and animals.

This is the first study to find regular methane on Mars. Some 21,000 tons of methane were released during a few months in late summer of 2003. Hmm…I wonder, could we run a pipe from Mars to Earth? Nah. Doesn’t seem likely, does it?

“This raises the probability substantially that life was there or still survives at the present,” says the study author at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

By 2006, most of the methane had disappeared…adding to the mystery of the gas.

A similar phenomenon to the Mars belch happens in the waters near Santa Barbara, Calif. There the gas comes from decaying life in the sea floor. Even microbes in the Arctic and other extreme Earth environments release methane even they don’t use O2.

Methane is not only a waste product of life, it is also food for other life. NASA doesn’t know where the methane came from but they’d sure like to have it appear again. What do you think about the possibility of life in space?

he problem is not why Japan cannot meet its protocol goals. The problem is why Japan doesn’t know WHY it’s not meeting its goal. Consider these two most recent Christmas displays.

This one is not technically a Christmas display, but it’s Christmas, and here it is. It’s called the Kobe Luminarie in central Kobe, home of Kobe Bryant and Kobe beef. The Luminarie has been running annually since 1996. It will end on Dec. 15th. It is built to remember the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake. GP thinks that Japan could remember those who died in the earthquake by taking better care of the environment left for those who are still alive.

This one is a Christmas display.

It is the Caretta OCEAN Christmas 2008 at Shiodome in Tokyo and will run through Dec 25.

Maybe…maybe…Japan could learn a lesson from the guys who made this tunnel at the Toki no Sumba resort in Shizuoka prefecture. The entire thing is lit up with lights from solar power.

Now, if they could just figure out how to do the Christmas displays and commemorations with solar power at night, eh?

Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions hit a record high making Japan the world’s fifth-largest CO2 producer and putting them at risk of an embarrassing failure to meet its Kyoto target over the next four years. The increase of 2.3 percent last year was largely due to the closure of Japan’s biggest nuclear power plant after an earthquake.

Emissions rose to 1.371 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent in the Japanese fiscal year through March. The year before Japan finally saw a decline of 1.3 percent decline. Japan needs to cut emissions by an estimated 13.5 percent to hit its 2008-2012 target under Kyoto of down 6 percent from 1990 levels.

The task of cutting emissions may be its worst since the onset of a global recession, a diversion of governments’ focus away from climate change the investment needed.

Japan is not going to make their goal.

Source: Yahoo!

Seven Eleven Japan, the convenience store plans to equip all its new stores with LED-based signboards and outdoor lighting. The effort is to reduce emissions of global warming gases. LEDs will likely be able to allow 7-11 to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 3%, or 1.8 tons per store per year times 1000 new stores each year.

The Seven & i Holdings Co. estimates that it will spend more than 1 billion yen a year on LED lighting. An initial investment per new store will cost 1-2 million yen. Down the road, Seven-Eleven Japan is expected to use roughly 75% less power than fluorescent lights, thus getting back their investment. LED lights also last four to five years, compared with a year or so for fluorescent lights.

Rival convenience store operators, Lawson Inc., FamilyMart Co. and Circle K Sunkus Co. have been testing LED-based signboards, however, 7-11 is the first to take the plunge on a large scale.

Convenience store operators are also turning to more power-efficient air conditioning to reduce their CO2 emissions.

Shall we call this a convenient truth?

Source: Nikkei
Image courtesy of chishikilauren

The latest data about Japan’s greenhouse-gas emissions cast a serious doubt over the Japan’s commitment to its Kyoto Protocol efforts.

The Environment Ministry reported Japan’s emissions hit a record high of carbon dioxide, 8.7% more than what Japan spewed in 1990. The 1997 Kyoto treaty calls for Japan to reduce its emissions to 6% BELOW the 1990 level. Japan is going the wrong way.

Emissions grew 2.3% since last year, largely in part to the closing of Japan’s largest nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture because of an earthquake in the region. Consequently, Japan has had to rely on electrical output from thermal power plants, which are heavy CO2 dischargers. Japanese households have produced 8.4% more greenhouse gases than last year. The unusually hot summer led to increased use of air conditioners.

In the next five years they needs to cut its emissions by 13.5% to meet its commitment and Japan’s best bet is either to plant more trees or increase the capacity utilization ratio of its nuclear power plant, up from 60.7%. A ratio 84.2% (1998), and Japan would have coughed up 5% less greenhouse gas in 2007.

The economy, however, is slowing. As production falls, so too will emissions. Japan needs to cut 50 million metric tons, per year. The steel industry lowered its emissions last year to 1% below its 1990 level despite an 8% increase in crude steel output. The chemical sector is 7% higher than its 1990 figure.

Japan is not going to make it. So, now what?

Source: Nikkei (sub req)
Image courtesy of hubbbadyabutters