[Brief translation]
Even as seen in Japan, petrochemical and other industrial complexes generate large volumes of waste heat. Measures must then be taken to cool the hot wastewater before discharging it into the sea. If this waste heat is carefully collected and used to produce electricity, you would have an enormous source of energy. In Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, where there is a severe shortage of water, petroleum is used as fuel for vaporizing seawater to produce drinking water. If the resulting waste heat can be converted into electricity, the cost of the energy used for producing fresh water can be reduced.
This problem of waste heat is having serious consequences on the environment. In some places, white sand may look beautiful, but it is the result of dead coral reefs that have been crushed into sand, so that even if the water is clean there are few fish. The cause could lie in environmental changes caused by an abnormal rise in the temperature of the seawater in the vicinity of thermal discharge from industrial complexes. Ocean thermal energy conversion is a technology that can also help with these global environmental issues.
It is believed that we have already extracted half of the crude oil that exists on the planet. The development of new petroleum deposits has not kept pace with improvements in oil exploration technologies. It may be possible to find oil by digging deeper, or by digging below the ocean floor, but these methods are not likely to be economically viable. For this reason, the price of crude oil continues to remain high. Efficient energy development is an important issue.

<< This month a joint venture is being established with the corporate giant Jamjoom in Saudi Arabia. Its focus of attention will be ocean thermal energy conversion. The Middle East was chosen because of its position as the "Ginza" of the energy industry. Success there will be a springboard for business development. >>

"We didn't rush into this. First we made sure we had the intellectual property rights and enough young researchers. Two-thirds of our employees are engineers. We are sending eight employees to graduate school. They are studying marine environment at Tokyo University. This is because we need people who are able to see issues on a global scale. We are also sending them to Saga University to study heat transfer engineering. Kobe Steel and Hitachi Zosen have also joined our project, and share our dream of bringing a completely new technology into the world. A basic rule at our company is not to compete with others. I tell our employees not to try to compete with other companies. We don't aspire to become the bloody sword-holding winner of a battle with others in the same industry. I tell them instead to do research that no one else is doing."