[Brief translation]
The Japanese environmental technology of ocean thermal energy conversion is in the spotlight. With this next-generation clean energy system, as long as a temperature difference of 15-30 degrees C exists, thermal energy can be converted into electricity, even without using fuel. Xenesys is a Tokyo-based venture firm established early on to develop this technology. In February of this year, the company will be establishing a joint venture with the Saudi Arabian corporate giant Jamjoom to shift the project into a higher gear.
Many countries in the Middle East besides Saudi Arabia, including Kuwait and Bahrain, use their abundant petroleum resources to produce drinking water, generally using a water desalination plant that vaporizes seawater into fresh water. The heated wastewater, at times 30 degrees C, raises the temperature of the ocean, and is killing marine life. This is becoming a serious environmental problem. Thermal energy conversion is being looked at seriously as a way of using the thermal energy in the heated wastewater to solve this problem.
"There is high demand for our power generation plants in the Middle East--50-60 in Saudi Arabia alone. The scale of each plant is in the several hundred billion yen range," says President Satomi, emphasizing the huge market potential. In India, which is moving away from nuclear energy, the national government is planning to build one thousand 50,000-kilowatt OTEC plants. Countries in the Indian Ocean including Sri Lanka and the Maldives are expected to introduce such plants in the future, along with Palau Island in the Pacific Ocean.
It is becoming a good opportunity now even to introduce ocean thermal energy conversion in Japan in such locations as industrial belts. The reason is that the New Energy Development Organization (NEDO) has decided to grant subsidies to energy-saving projects that use thermal energy conversion, in order to promote the effective utilization of heated effluent in fiscal 2003. It is likely that major oil corporations and chemical manufacturers will be among those that actively introduce such systems in the future.