2023-06-09 22:12:32
AFukushima of all places. The prefecture in Japan is best known in Germany for the triple catastrophe in 2011, when an earthquake and a tsunami triggered several core meltdowns in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since then, however, the region north of Tokyo has developed into a pioneer of renewable energies.
So many solar parks have been built on abandoned farmsteads and disused golf courses that on good days the region can cover more than 80 percent of its electricity needs from renewable energies. It should be 100 percent by 2040 at the latest. The governor never wants to restart the nuclear reactors, of which there were ten in the region before 2011.
“We can learn from Fukushima: if you set yourself a goal, you can also achieve it,” says Hendrik Wüst, when he is shown a solar system in bright sunshine, which is only 50 kilometers away from the damaged nuclear power plant.
Hydrogen from solar power
The Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia (CDU) travels through Japan for four days. The visit to Fukushima, a partner region of the federal state, is all about the energy transition.
When the weather is as perfect as it was that day, the solar panels in the test facility in the city of Soma can produce 1,200 kilowatts of electricity. That is far more than the nearby sewage treatment plant and waste incineration plant need. “And that’s a good thing,” explains Seiichi Nakajima, the manager of the plant, to the prime minister. This is how the test facility can do what it was built for: namely test how the fluctuating solar power can best be stored and evenly fed into the local grid.
Among other things, machines produce green hydrogen from solar power. If the solar cells deliver less electricity in bad weather, the hydrogen produced can feed additional electricity into the grid via fuel cells.
“The best instruments in the world”
The large-scale production of hydrogen using green technologies is considered one of the hopes for climate protection because it would be an energy source that emits practically no greenhouse gases. That’s what it’s all about at the H2-Lab, which the Ruhr University Bochum runs at the University of Osaka. Professor Thomas Happe and a few other scientists are researching how a type of algae can be used to produce green hydrogen.
“The best instruments in the world are here,” enthuses Happe as he explains the cooperation between the two universities to the Prime Minister. “I couldn’t carry out my experiments in Bochum or anywhere else in the world.” Wüst’s eyes also lit up when Happe showed him one of the high-resolution microscopes made by the Japanese as an example and a well-known structure appeared on a screen as a demonstration object: a corona virus . “This cooperation also shows how important international exchange is,” says Wüst.
Many politicians prefer to travel to China
For a long time, however, Japan was not very high on the travel list of German politicians. Wüst is the first prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia in 16 years to visit the country in the Far East. Japan has always been an important economic partner. More than 600 Japanese companies are based in North Rhine-Westphalia and employ 50,000 people. Large corporations from the federal state such as Bayer, Evonik or Thyssen-Krupp are all naturally represented in Japan.
But for German politicians who wanted to present themselves on the world stage, China had been the number one contact point in Asia for years. Only Russia’s attack on Ukraine changed a lot. “The Russian war of aggression in Ukraine has shown us that it is not only important to do good business, but also to share common values,” says Wüst.
“Not only growth, also democracy”
The issue of proximity to China is also of concern to some of the traveling entrepreneurs. “Our customers increasingly want to know how dependent we are on China,” says Gerd Hoppe, Managing Director of Beckhoff Automation GmbH & Co. KG. The medium-sized company from Verl manufactures automation technology for the manufacture of semiconductors and cola bottles and, according to Hoppe, is one of the largest manufacturers of semiconductors in Europe. “We have to explain to the customer how we can set up alternatives if the worst comes to the worst.” In this respect, Japan is not only interesting for Beckhoff as a sales market, but also for purchasing its materials.
At the end of his trip, Wüst sounds very similar to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), who was in Japan just a few weeks ago for the G7 summit, and a few weeks before that with half his cabinet: “Japan is a country that, like Germany, is not only stands for growth and prosperity,” says Wüst, “but in which democracy and the rule of law are also lived and which advocates a rules-based world order.”
Is there already a candidate for Chancellor of the CDU in position? The question lets Wüst roll off and, of course, prefers to point out how important the trip is as a location advertisement for North Rhine-Westphalia.
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