Identification of the role of renewable energy: A view from Japan's challenge: The New Sunshine Program

Despite intensive efforts aiming at substituting oil with technology-driven new energy, i.e. primarily with renewable energy, a limited amount of renewable energy has become practically utilized. In response to increasing concerns of the global environmental consequences of CO2 discharge resulting from energy use as well as from the rapidly increasing energy consumption in developing nations, renewable energy has again become the highlight in view of global security, its cleanness and accessibility to developing nations. In order to respond to these global expectations, on the basis of 20 years experience in developing renewable energy, it is extremely important to identify the current role of renewable energy in a global context. In response to such a requirement, Japan reorganized its long-lasting Sunshine Project (R&D on New Energy Technologies) towards a more comprehensive New Sunshine Program (R&D on Energy and Environmental Technologies) in 1993. In the process of this reorganization, an intensive assessment with a view to identifying the current role of renewable energy was undertaken. This paper presents a review of such an identification on the basis of the assessment of the contribution of the Sunshine Project to its initial objectives (i.e., to induce the industry to substitute technology-driven clean energy for limited energy sources, mainly oil)