Will the Green Growth Strategy Lead to Promising Business Opportunities? Exploring the Future Five Years from Now

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about great changes in our society and business environment. To grasp the nature of the social transformation arising from this ongoing event, since May 2020 Nikkei BP has been conducting a series of surveys of Japanese businesspeople (more than 11,000 in total). The results unveil major alterations in their mindsets. Following the Japanese government's declaration on realizing "Carbon Neutrality by 2050" in October 2020, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) took the lead in formulating the "Green Growth Strategy through Achieving Carbon Neutrality in 2050," which was unveiled in December of the same year. The Ministry positions this strategy as "an industrial policy to lead the challenging goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, a vision that is upheld by the Suga administration and aims toward a positive cycle of economic growth and the environmental protection." The strategy emphasizes 14 sectors as priority fields (Fig…
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Nikola Positioned to Accelerate Hydrogen Economy

Competitive electricity price paves the way for hydrogen production in Arizona Nikola Corporation (NASDAQ: NKLA) has secured an innovative electric rate schedule with Arizona Public Service Company (“APS”) that makes possible the accelerated development of hydrogen-based fueling solutions for the transportation industry. Nikola is a company dedicated to the advancement of innovative zero-emissions truck solutions and the energy infrastructure required to make this feasible. By facilitating low-cost production of hydrogen, the Arizona Corporation Commission’s (“ACC”) approval of this rate schedule paves the way for the curtailment of greenhouse gases in the transportation sector, while also providing benefits to key constituents via novel grid-balancing solutions. Today’s unanimous approval of this agreement by the ACC provides Nikola with a competitive electric rate specifically designed for the production, processing, and dispensing of hydrogen. This will support, among ot…
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In Case You Needed Another Reason To Visit Aruba

Aruba, like many countries, is heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels for energy. Currently, nearly 85% of the energy is generated by heavy fuel oil but that is going to change. Aruba pledged to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2020, particularly variable wind and solar. This 19 mile long island launched it’s Green Gateway Initiative in 2011 at the UN Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development. With the support of Carbon War Room, an international nonprofit, Aruba created its plan of action beginning with wind farm development, a waste-to-energy plant, and a Airport Solar Park. They are taking the Smart Growth Pathway that addresses many different areas of an expanding economy, such as; eco-tourism, incentives for household retrofitting and commercial energy efficiency, the sustainable agriculture practice known as controlled environment agriculture, urban planning that supports this transition, and investments in innovation. This plan focuses on three comp…
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Solar Powered Airplane Lands in New York on Historic Flight Around the World

NEW YORK What started as a sky-is-the-limit dream for two Swiss explorer/entrepreneurs is now one giant, soaring, fuel-free, #futureisclean reality. Bertrand Piccard (@bertrandpiccard) André Borschberg (@andreborschberg) and their innovative solar plane, Solar Impulse 2, reached a milestone Saturday as it completed a trip across the United States. The solar-powered airplane on a globe-circling voyage that began in the United Arab Emirates more than a year ago. The Swiss-made plane landed at John F. Kenney International Airport at 4 a.m. after a 4 hour 41 minute flight of about 165 miles from Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania. Its trip across the U.S. mainland began April 24, when Solar Impulse landed in San Francisco from Hawaii. The aviation industry told them #solarimpulse was an impossible project so they built their own team & found new solutions. Read more from their logbook here. Have you ever seen bicycles assist an airplane landing …
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E-Bikes and Solar Redefine Bike Transportation

SUSTAINABLE ELECTRIC BIKING Go ahead. Park your bike in the sun. This new SOLAR BIKE soaks up the rays and stores them as power that can move you at up to 30 mph. It's battery powered but needs no plugs and is an innovative and sustainable alternative to the electric bike. It is forecast that about 350,000 electric bicycles will be sold to customers in the United States by 2015 and, Asia and Europe are counted among the most important market for e-bikes. Sales of e-bikes has grown steadily each year in Europe from 98,000 units in 2006 to 588,000 units in 2010. The NY Times reports that it all began in China where an estimated 120 million electric bicycles now hum along the roads, up from a few thousand in the 1990s. They are replacing traditional bikes and motorcycles at a rapid clip and, in many cases, allowing people to avoid purchasing cars. While countries in the Asia Pacific region will continue to account for the vast majority of E-Bike sales in the next several…
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Yoga Instructor to Trucking CEO; Caitlin Welby’s Journey to the Driver’s Seat at RFX

How did an art school grad, yoga instructor, who was so against car culture that she didn’t get her drivers license until she was 28 end up the CEO of a trucking company? We didn’t believe it either. 32 year-old Caitlin Welby may not be the youngest CEO, but this drifter’s “road less traveled” recently landed her squarely in the driver’s seat of a sixty year old trucking company founded by her grandfather. RFX (which stands for Refrigerated Food Express) was founded in 1952 by Welby’s grandfather, Thomas E. Welby, Sr. and then run by her grandmother and her father until his death in 2000. The self-described punk rock artist was repulsed by the dirty business of trucking and preferred to wander the planet than to step foot near her father’s business—which she felt was destroying the planet. After spending her twenties traveling as a countercultural, eco-conscious bohemian, Welby gravitated toward leadership training and found a somewhat unsettling affinity toward …
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