Monday, March 19, 2012

No. 42: The smart village project starts with government support (March 19, 2012)

Business trend
Two government agencies, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan and the Ministry of the Environment, will jointly start the smart village project in which renewable energy supplies power in rural area. Besides utilizing agricultural water and thinned wood for power generation and heat supply, the project facilitates the installment of equipment for photovoltaic generation and wind generation in the fields and rice paddies that have been abandoned and are no longer cultivated. The project aims to help the rural area realize self-sufficiency of power.

The two agencies will invite public participation for the substantiative experiment to test the cost and combination of generation systems. They will select five locations in the country and assist municipalities financially in their substantiative experiments. They will screen the problems with distribution of power generated by sunlight and water, cost of management, and adjustment of irrigation right in using agricultural water. Rural areas have lots of idle lands for renewable energy generation in addition to thinned wood processable to woody biomass.

Currently, generation by renewable energy accounts for slightly above 1% of all power generation if large-scale hydraulic generation is excluded. The government wishes to increase the share to 3% in three years by utilizing small-scale hydraulic generation and the fields and rice paddies that have been abandoned and are no longer cultivated. For this purpose, it is critical to work out a system that allows the rural area to consume power generated locally.

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