Currently, Sharp’s biggest product lines are television sets and liquid-crystal display panels, with solar panels representing about nine percent of its overall revenue.
Interviewed at Sharp’s corporate headquarters in Osaka, Katayama said the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident changed the nature of discussions about renewable energy in Japan. Before the disaster, he said, most of the conversations revolved around or where inspired by corners over global warming.
With that as a context, nuclear power seemed like available and sufficient approach to reducing carbon emissions, Katayama said.
After the disaster, “discussions are no longer limited to the context of global warming,” he said.
“As people have become more aware of the risks nuclear power involves, Japan is now asking itself a more fundamental question of how to secure energy, like it once did during the oil crises in the 1970s,” he explained.
In the short term, Katayama said concerns over safety will trump concerns over the current, higher cost of alternative clean energy, but industries and those with limited resources, may be pained by the shift over the long term.
“The question is how to find a way to design a compromise plan and agree on it. That's what political leaders need to work on,” he said.
When it comes specifically to solar power, Katayama said people often misunderstand its cost.
“Its cost is mostly the initial investment of buying solar panels and setting them up,” he said. “[But] because solar power generation involves no turbines, motors or other driving systems, it has a very long life span.
“Semiconductors used in our solar cells could last for a century or longer. In Japan, solar panels are still primarily used on rooftops of houses and Japanese houses typically last only about 30 years. When houses are finished, so are the solar panels on their roofs,” he continued.
“But at large solar-power plants, once you've collected the initial investment, the rest of the cost will be just for maintenance,” Katayama added. “Large solar projects in the US and Europe are all based on such long-term cost analysis.
“Japan has yet to develop a system for solar power generation for industrial purposes, because the country has been depending mostly on thermal and nuclear power,” he said.
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