The first speaker was His Excellency Dr. Hans Carl von Werthern, the Ambassador of Germany to Japan. Ambassador Werthern introduced the successful low carbon politics of Germany “Energiewende”, which means the transition from conventional energy system to a low carbon, environmentally sound, reliable, and affordable energy supply.

Siting the winning record of Germany that renewables have become No. 1 power source in 2015, we learned Energiewende is already been widely accepted from German society.

In the next place, Dr. Oskar Bartenstein, the CEO of Spanner KK gave presentation to introduce the great capability of electricity and heat from wood.

He pointed out that while typical biomass cogeneration plants are smaller than thermal or nuclear power plants commonly used by power utilities, we can say those are superior from five points “Liberalized”, “Distributed”, “Highly-efficient”, “Renewable” and “Local”. And he also noted that using fossil fuel is not only wasting two third of energy and money for its low efficiency, but also we are afflicting people of oil-producing countries by financing many wars.

On the other hand, thanks to the recent development of electric vehicles, biomass cogeneration has added one more value “Transportation” to “electric power” and “heat”. Therefore, biomass cogeneration has become much superior energy solution especially in remote woody areas, where are costly to supply power and oil all the time.

The second half started with the presentation of Mr. Yasuhiro Murakami, Sub Manager, OSAKI CoolGen Corporation. OSAKI CoolGen was co-established, by Chugoku Electric Power Corporation and Electric Power Development Co.,Ltd. (J-POWER), to develop low carbon coal fired power generation technology.

While coal fired power plant is not only superior to other fossil fuels (such as oil and gas) with respect to energy security, cost and role of base load power source, its high CO2 emission had been a great challenge toward low carbon society. In the context of demand to develop low carbon coal fired power generation, Osaki Coolgen is now planning the roadmap to complete Integrated Coal Gasification Fuel Cell Combined Cycle (IGFC) and Fuel Cell Combined Cycle.

1st stage−IGCC (Energy efficient low emission power generation technology)…Started March 2017
2nd stage−IGCC + CO2 capture…Completed by fiscal year 2020
3rd stage−IGCC + CO2 capture + Fuel cell…Completed by fiscal year 2021

The next speaker was Mr. Takashi Sasaki, the Chief Technology Executive of Toshiba.

The development of thermal power plant efficiency has made progress as “Sub-Critical”, “USC (Ultra Super Critical)”, “A-UAS (Advanced Ultra Super Critical Steam Condition)” and ICGG (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle). It is true that in the course of those advancements, the generation efficiency has been greatly improved. But on top, Toshiba’s Direct-Fired Supercritical Oxy-Combustion CO2 Power Cycle Demonstration became the first successful example to capture 100 percent of CO2 for power generation.

Point 1: Although the limit of CO2 capture was believed as 90%. However, with the aid of groundbreaking technology “Oxy-fuel Combustion” which utilizes CO2 as an essential part of system, they could finally achieve 100% carbon capture.
Point 2: Able to function without installing additional equipment

Necessarily, this excellent low carbon technology is sure to contribute greatly to our future low carbon society.