February 25, 2013
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2013 February 27 - March 5 [ENVIRONMENT]
Local residents & firms jointly initiate renewable energy business |
Founded in December last year, Hotoku Energy Co. is funded by more than 20 business entities, most of which are local-based firms, such as taxi and gas companies, fish markets, and fish product makers.
The company’s president is Minomiya Takeo, whose family has engaged in farming in the city for 200 years. The 69-year-old man had worked as an executive of a major electronics products maker and had never doubted the safety of nuclear power generation. “We were dealing with Tokyo Electric Power Co. (operator of the crippled Fukushima plant), and I fully supported nuclear energy.”
Minomiya said that he studied rigorously about nuclear power and renewable energy after the 3.11 disaster. “We want to do what we can do locally to change the path taken by society”, he said.
At the end of 2011, the city invited residents to form a council and they discussed for a year how to launch a local business to generate renewable energy. The council was coordinated by Suzuki Daisuke, the third generation owner of a local sanitation business.
“I wanted to bring new energy to the city where I was born and grew up,” said the 39-year-old local business leader. The central part of Odawara City suffers from the hollowing out of businesses as all three department stores located there were closed.
The council initially decided to lease public facilities’ roofs for solar power generation as its main business. However, it found out that the city does not have many facilities available for this project because they are getting old or are secured as evacuation sites in case of tsunami.
The council then decided to operate a mega solar power plant and met Tsujimura Momoki, 56, who owns a 70 hectare-forest in the city. He is also the eighth generation owner of the “Tsujimura farmland”.
Before the council contacted him, Tsujimura had many calls from major solar power companies asking him to lease his land to them. “But I didn’t just want to be a lease lender,” he said.
“In the past, village people used to go to the mountain to pick up branches and maintain the mountain. Now, citizens get together to install solar panels to generate energy. I hope this business will generate a new model of a sustainable relationship between farmland and forest that fosters local self-reliance and sense of community,” said Tsujimura.
This summer, solar panels capable of generating 1 MW of electricity will be installed on a two hectare-site on a hill that overlooks the central part of Odawara City.
Related past articles:
> Fukushima farmers trying to recover using solar power (January 21, 2013)
> Together with consumers, farmers start renewable power generation (January 19, 2013)
> Small town strives for renewable energy development (January 12, 2013)
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