Due to the March 11, 2011, event, the seaside towns of Sendai and Fukushima became well-known throughout the world. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was damaged by a tremendous surge of water up to 50 feet high after a magnitude 9 earthquake off the coast of Sendai brought seas from the Pacific Ocean inland to the Japanese island, engulfing many communities and resulting in meltdowns in three reactors. After 11 years, the Fukushima prefecture government has transformed from being a site for nuclear power plants to a pioneer in the development of renewable energy. This happened because a large portion of the town’s land has remained undeveloped owing to radioactivity that leaked from the destroyed nuclear power plant.
The Fukushima Prefecture’s renewable energy initiative was launched three years after the accident, with a target date of 2040 for reaching 100% renewable energy. Currently, 11 solar farms and 10 wind farms on contaminated or abandoned sites provide around 40% of its energy. To date, $2.75 billion has been spent on renewable energy in an effort to reach this carbon neutrality and nuclear power free target. In order to encourage the broad usage of electrified vehicles, Hiroki Nakajima, president of Commercial Japan Partnership Technologies Corporation (CJPT), announced on July 19 a social deployment of an energy management system in the Fukushima Prefecture by January 2023. Tokyo was eventually going to catch wind of this program. The Fukushima Revitalization Plan, which aimed to create a society that is safe and secure and can continue to expand without relying on nuclear power, is consistent with the idea of a widespread (the target is 100% electric vehicles). Renewable energy was a key component of the town’s growth plan throughout the rehabilitation phase in order to fully utilize areas contaminated by radioactive waste that were previously thought to be unusable for hundreds of years. As a result, the Fukushima Renewable Energy Promotion Vision aims to meet 100% of global energy demand from renewable sources by the year 2040. One of the initiatives is to speed up the development of allied industries so that the area may become a global leader in renewable energy.
It is easy to understand why the CJPT decided to pilot its commercial vehicle social implementation strategy in Fukushima.
In this social implementation project, commercial electrified vehicles will be launched, including heavy-duty fuel cell electric trucks (heavy-duty FC electric trucks) for main line transportation and mini-commercial van BEVs for last-mile deliveries. Additionally, the CPJT stated in a statement that energy management combined with commercial vehicle operation management will result in decreases in total burden on society and CO2 emissions.
Since April 2021, CJPT has been thinking about efforts at logistics hubs like Fukushima to help create a society that is carbon neutral and lighten the load on workers and vehicles. by hastening the adoption of CASE, an acronym for connected vehicles, autonomous / automated driving, shared, and electric that the group employs.
Consignors, logistics companies, infrastructure providers, automakers, and other relevant partners must work together to address sustainability by adopting a practical strategy in order to promote the wider adoption of electrified cars. It was decided to start social implementation projects in Fukushima and Tokyo after lengthy conversations with several persons in various businesses.
Through this effort, CJPT will accelerate society’s transition to carbon neutrality and, along with its partners, take on the problems it faces as chances for industrial growth and the bolstering of global competitiveness.
The Green Innovation Fund/Building Smart Mobility Society is a project funded by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), a national research and development organization. Its goal is to market and run an energy management system in the real world. The CJPT is also aware that the adoption of commercial electric vehicles places a burden on users, including increased peak electricity demand at business locations as a result of uneven recharging timing, downtime for cargo and vehicles due to recharging (and hydrogen filling), as well as increased vehicle purchase costs.
This is the rationale behind the program’s overall deployment of an energy management system coupled with operational management that connects every vehicle utilized in the scheme to infrastructure for hydrogen and electric vehicle refueling. heavily on operational management data to balance the overall power demand on the business sites of consignors and logistics companies, while optimizing the remaining battery/hydrogen level of the vehicle, taking into account the charging amount and timing for electrified vehicles on the business sites and en route, and taking into account the power consumption of buildings as well as delivery plans.
The scheme can also help Fukushima companies that are working in the renewable energy sector, bringing full circle the renewable energy produced by non-polluting electric automobiles. In this program, which runs from January 2023 to December 2029, over 600 electric vehicles of various sizes and with both pure battery and fuel-cell power sources will be deployed.
image from Wikipedia Commons (CC BY 3.0 DE license)
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