First Cellulosic Bioethanol Plant Opens in Osaka January 17, 2007
Posted by fukumimi in Energy, Japan.1 comment so far
Bio Ethanol Japan (BEJ) has opened the world’s first cellulosic bioethanol plant in Osaka. It is also the first commercial bioethanol plant in Japan. The plant takes wood based waste materials (construction industry waste, waste from industrial wood product maufacturing, agricultural plant waste, tree cuttings, etc - and potentially in the future energy crops which do not require prime arable real estate which are required for high sugar/starch crops) and extracts the polysaccharide content which is (eventually) fermented into ethanol. The rest of the biomass (mainly lignin) is used to generate energy (heat and electricity co-generation to maximise energy efficiency).
I’ve written before saying how I am not convinced that corn/beet/soya/sugarcane based bioethanol production using is the way forward, as the feedstock (and the land used to cultivate same) consumption for bioethanol production competes with alternative uses, like, feeding people (directly and indirectly) - this even if we take into account the fact that some portion of corn (for example) can be used as feedstock (because the bioethanol is created from the starch content, the distillers dry grain feedstock co-product is of high protein content, and whilst this can augment livestock feed, the energy (starch->carbohydrate) content has to come from alternative sources compared to whole grain based feed as the starch is stripped out). That is even before we get to the impending water crisis which I feel is inevitable in many of the current grain production areas.
Moreover, the (mainly) corn based bioethanol movement in the US seems to be dependent on the huge farming subsidies paid out to corn farmers. [This from a country who is constantly harassing other nations to open up their markets to US agricultural imports]
Cellulosic bioethanol is the way forward (if the internal combustion engine is to be retained at all). Fossil fuel consumption is cut drastically by up to 86% compared to fossil fuel petroleum, compared to a cut of 20-30% with corn based bioethanol. [Wang 2005 - Dr Michael Wang at the Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory is a recognised expert in the field of energy and emissions relating to net energy (so called well to wheel) calculations relating to transport fuels]
TheBEJ plant was constructed with a budget of JPY4B, or just a shade under $50M, and has a production output of 1400kl/yr, or slightly under 10,000 barrels per annum.
Japanese domestic petroleum consumption is 60Gl/yr(400 million barrels), so it really is a drop in the ocean, but a step in the right direction. Currently Japanese legislation allows a maximum of 3% ethanol (so-called E3), which would require 1.8Gl, or 12 million barrels of ethanol, to convert all petroleum to E3. The plant expects to increase production to 4000kl/yr (27,000barrels) within a couple of years….
Currently the price of the bioethanol is double the cost of petroleum, so the plant will not make money on bioethanol sales alone. The plan appears to be try to break even by integrating the plant with industial waste collection, which is also revenue generating.
The current plant uses sulphuric acid hydrolysis to break down the polysaccharides into simple sugars. This method requires a neutralisation step before the fermentation porcess, and consumes both sulphuric acid and neutralising agent. The hope is that an efficient enzymatic hydolysis process can be found, which will reduce costs (and mean less handling of nasty chemicals).
BEJ is owned by construction giant Taisei Corporation, Marubeni, Sapporo Beer, and a couple of large recycling related firms. Marubeni and Tsukishima Kikai provided the bioethanol procesing plant technology, and Sapporo the fermentation technology.
$50M for a plant would theoretically be in VC funding territory (PlasticLogic raised $100M for a plastic semiconductor factory recently), but 10,000 barrels/yr is just $0.5M at current petroleum prices - clearly not a viable proposition. It remains to be seen how much build-out work is needed to bring production up to a significant level, but currently, as the company admits, the economics are far from viable.
With engineering and technical resources being illiquid here in Japan, I can’t see venture businesses being big players in the energy scene here, but as far as the enabling technologies are concerned, there are still opportunities for David to beat Goliath. If only talented technologists were willing to take a chance and fly the nest.
Town opts for isolation policy??? January 17, 2007
Posted by fukumimi in Japan, Media, Politics.6 comments
Via JapanProbe
[...] I would like to propose a new award: the “Dejima Awards,” given to those in Japan who actively try to shield themselves from foreigners and foreign influence, culture and ideas.
I would like to nominate the Setaka Town Assembly (Fukuoka Prefecture) for this year’s award. The town was trying to attract a university to establish a campus in town, and in the process asked for comments from the townsfolk.
A group of residents submitted a deposition opposing a campus that did not reject foreign students. They were worried about the crime such students would bring. That’s right — the residents wanted a university as long as there were no foreign students. The town assembly voted to accept the proposal without debate.
On the face of it, sounds like a xenophobic town assembly in the sticks up to no good. However, the actual story looks a little different(article in Japanese) .It is true that Setaka Town Assembly did vote in favour of a public petition opposing the university, on 20th December. However, the same assembly reconvened on the very next day to modify its approval to exclude the item regarding foreign students, as that part was deemed “inappropriate”, and that there were “insufficient discussions” about this issue. You don’t say….
I’m guessing the realityis that the assembly members didn’t actually bother reading the petition before all voting to approve it (without a debate)……
Which is absolutely pathetic. Another piece of evidence which just shows how much deadweight exists in the Japanese political system.
The fact that the xenophobic demand appears on the petition does say something about the residents who drafted the petition without a doubt (and also those who signed it - the ones who read it, at least). However, it must be noted that the incident where a Fukuoka family was murdered by three Chinese overseas students looms over this area, which is close to Fukuoka. Add that to the fact that many rural Japanese universities do seem to rely to an increasing extent on overseas students to keep the student population up, and I think it is hard not too feel a tiny bit of sympathy for this basically rural community who are just fearing the unknown. For all intents and purposes, “foreign students” coming to a rural non-prestigeous university are likely to be overwhelmingly from Asia (and some from developing world). I note that the person who wrote in appears to be from Australia. I wonder how, say, Ipswich, Queensland would “welcome” a plan to set up an university with a significant ethnic minority intake - say, 30% from say, “Asia” - I think Pauline Hanson meant yellow people - or Papua or Lebanon, by way of example.
The petition appears to have been started because residents felt that they were not being consulted adequately. Other issues (apart from the foreign students) which appear to have been raised include the necessity of a new university - to which the local authority is expected to put up some money (JPY600M, or about $6.5M), when Fukuoka, just 40minutes away by train, is home to 10 universities and 8 more junior colleges. There are also several higher education establishments catering to the same market as the proposed university in several neighbouring areas.
The residents do appear to have a point regarding the fiscal issue, seeing that Setaka Town apparently has more that JPY10B (approaching $100M) of debt, and this university is going to cost them some more.
Japanese universities (yes, all 700+ universities - seriously, do we really need 700 universities??? )- and all educational institutions for that matter - are required to own the freehold of their facility, and in this case it appears the local authority was going to buy the land, have it simultaneously re-zoned and then give the land to the university.
I guess the town’s logic (at least officially, discounting the under-the-table deals and such, as well as the fact that building a university is good business for local construction industry types who are uniformly well represented in local assemblies - just look at the “competitive bidding” results for ) is that the town needs to attract young people (as many of the native youngsters flee to Fukuoka and beyond).
The town is about to undergo a 3-way merger to create a new Miyama “city” on 28th January 2007, less than a fortnight from now.
Setaka Town also built a “cultural facility” for $15M in time for the merger, and the university smells like another pork barrel project to me…. Lots of stuff like that happening with the mergers going on all around Japan. Setaka doesn’t seem tob be the only party to the 3-way merger with dodgy cost keeping. Takata Town’s competitive tenders for a(nother) cultural center look suspicously like bid rigging, with the 3 contracts tendered at between 96.7%, 99.8%, and 100% (at JPY16,432,500 - not exactly a round figure) of the set ceiling price….
Anyway, I think the award should be called the Sakoku Awards, if they want to keep foreigners out, rather than confine them to gaijin zones - like Roppongi, say.
Mii, You, Wii January 12, 2007
Posted by fukumimi in games.1 comment so far
With Santa delivering a Wii chez la maison fukumimi this Christmas past, and having been too ill to venture out during the holidays, much of my time was spent wrapped in a blanket in front of the good old TV. When I wasn’t watching the Emperor’s Cup final, university rugby, high school football, or the Hakone Ekiden roadrace - all staple sporting events of the New Year holiday, I spent too much time playing with my Wii.
Wii [I've decided to go with the usage where the plural of both Mii and Wii are the same as the singular, like "sheep"] still apparently in short supply in some parts in Japan, you still can’t be assured of getting your hands on one by walking into your local electronics megastore. On the other hand, PS3 supply issues appear to be pretty much resolved.
With certain games (like Nintendo’s Wii Sports), you can play the game with an avatar (called Mii in Nintendo parlance), which you create in montage fashion. It reminded me of the traditional Japanese New Year game of fukuwarai, which consists of an attempt by a blindfolded player to position facial parts (eyes, nose, mouth, etc) on a facial outline.
Anyway, creating a decent Mii is a challenge in itself, especially for someone lacking in a talent for visual arts like myself, and I spent too much time playing with various types of head shape, eyes, eyebrows, mouth, hairstyle/colour, (sun)glasses, and all the other features available to try to create a likeness. There are a serious number of possible variations possible. (I will attempt to do a calculation of the total number of possible avatars which are possible -even though some are complaining that the choices are too simplistic - I think this list is pretty good for starters)
Getting (finally) to the point of this post, Springwise points us to an enterprising outfit which offers to print likenesses of your Wii on a T-Shirt, by using the “send your Mii to a friend” capability available on any (internet connected) Wii. Very enterprising.
What I wondered was if Nintendo has actually got IP protection on the various facial components and the assembling thereof (and if that was actually possible and defensible - after all the graphics could be argued to be part of the UI which may be defensible property), and alternatively if they intended to get on the act themselves, maybe in alliance with a dropshipping outfit like Cafepress. They already offer a custom (black on white) engraved battery cover for your Wii remote if you are a Club Nintendo Platinum member (but you only qualify if you had enough points for 2006, which puts new-to-Nintendo Wii purchasers out of the loop).
Custom T-shirt printers could also recreate (to the extent that it would not infringe Nintendo’s IP Rights) the Mii creation application (probably Flash based, like this one although this would probably cross the line if it was a commercial effort) as part of the T-shirt customisation UI, this might be the easiest way to recreate a Mii outside of the Wii universe - users just need to configure their Mii using a “similar” interface. (Although you can send your Mii to others, others cannot deconstruct said Mii to easily reverse-engineer your Mii)
Thinking one step further, having spent too much time creating my Mii, here’s another free (niche) business idea -
Assumption: People who want a really nice Mii for themselves and cannot create one for themselves would be willing to pay a reasonable fee (say a few dollars) for a custom Mii to be created. You get them to buy your service and send a photo of themselves, from which an artist will create a Mii or two, and will send a Mii recipe to the user (so they can recreate their Mii and tweak it as necessary). I would certainly shell out a few bucks for a better Mii.
You will need: 1 (one) virtual shopfront with payment reconciliation mechanism (Ebay or similar?), and 1 (one) [or more] visual artist types (cartoonists of the type who sit on the pavement in tourist spots and draw caricatures for a fee would be great, art students and budding manga designers might also be applicable - perhaps even ship out a bunch of Wii to a low cost nation and find the above resources in that country), and probably 1 (one) Wii for each artist (or if you can get them to come into an office and set up a 24/7 shift system you would need only one Wii for each shift slot and get 3 times the throughput! Or you could as easily offer bored artistically talented housewives an opportunity to supplement their income working from home? - Actually, if the Flash Mii creator is accurate, that would work fine…. Although using it or a similar clone for commercial use might be, well, dodgy).
It could be integrated with a dropshipping service with Mii T-Shirts and other Mii goods for supplemental revenue. I think a system could be lashed up pretty quickly and easily, and you could make reasonable pocket money. I see miiforsale.com and miidesigner.com are free right now…..
I think users would be more comfortable working with a professional looking shop which can have a system where the individual designers do not get hold of people’s names and email addresses and the like.
I guess you could drive traffic to the site by creating a bunch of Mii of well known celebrities (and give out recipes for them on-line, so users don’t have to give you their Mii codes although I guess that would work (minus the ability for customisation of the imported Mii)).
On CES 2007 January 12, 2007
Posted by fukumimi in IT, Mobile, electronics.3 comments
Seeing I wasn’t in Las Vegas for CES this year (I promised myself I will make the trip next year), CES attendance was remotely via internet media coverage.
Whilst that meant I didn’t get to see much of the really interesting stuff going on at the grass roots level, most of the eye candy got sufficient coverage so I could get my tech geek fix.
1) On Apple’s cellphone
Yes, it looks nice. Real nice.
But GSM? Multi-year exclusive contract with Cingular? Not coming to Asia until 2008?
Again, Apple shows it can do the slick consumer product and presentation, but it is very old school when it comes to its business strategy. It seems it is another walled garden approach. I suspect the thing won’t even be a real “smartphone”, and will limit third party development to the sandbox of widgets and/or J2ME applets, not nearly the same kind of freedom as made available on real smartphone devices. I guess the thing is targetted not at business users but at Apple fans.
Anyway, technologically, there is really nothing new here. It shows again that UI is what really defines Apple. Full points there, at least as far as the screen GUI is concerned.
However. It doesn’t appear that a tactile feedback mechanism is incorporated into the screen, which will probably slow things down. Audible feedback? Not an option, if one expects to use one in public. I will grab any “iPhone” whose user dares to use one in my vicinity with some lame beeping audible feedback mechanism engaged, and throw it on the ground and stamp on it until the screen breaks. I’d do the same for any user who has a similarly annoying beep beep emanating from their conventional phone. I guess they could keep their headphones on at all times… In any case I just can’t see how the touchscreen can be made as easy to use to type text as even a physical tenkey (which permits blind touch typing) let alone a physical QWERTY thumb keyboard.
Apple going ahead with using “iPhone” although they knew Cisco owned and markets a telephony device of that name? Shows balls, but I have one word for Apple. Hypocrites. They get the lawyers go after anyone within a country mile of any of their trademarks, and then they pull this. Perhaps they think that the voice of their adoring fans will sway the courts. Think again. Cisco isn’t about to be bullied into submission. Cisco is twice as big as Apple.
Steve Jobs saying that phone calls are mobile’s killer app? Wrong answer. ESPECIALLY for the users right bang in the middle of the user profile for the “iPhone”. I’m sure the cool and trendy teenagers and twentysomethings will get annoyed when they realise that it is much more difficult to type their SMS messages and email. I didn’t see much typing being demonstrated at the demo….. I wonder why…..
Wi-Fi is nice, but don’t expect it to be nearly as ubiquitous as cellphone coverage, so data browsing is going to be a nightmare even on EDGE. So much is made of the ability to access the web. I’m not convinced that zooming and moving around sections of a PC format webpage is anywhere near optimal. We have full PC webpage browsing on mobile phones here (with similar zooming and scanning capability), and I (nor hardly any of my acquaintances) hardly ever use it (even with the high resolution screen on the phone). When it comes down to it, content is about substance, not presentation, especially when you are on the move. Do you think you can read a webpage whilst walking with an “iPhone” more easily than with, say, an optimised cHTML page on i-mode? I doubt it. I think it is unavoidable that for user friendly browsing experience on the move, you’ll need to format customised pages for the phone. Despite the protests of graphic designers, the prettiness of a page (ie the use of rounded corners or pastels or overelaborate use of graphics) does not add informational value. Both service providers and users need to get over their stubborn insistence that the mobile web should be similar to the PC web. The reason the Japanese mobile web community has been thriving is fundamentally intertwined with the fact that no such false expectation existed.
2) What is it with those squat cylinders?
Is that like the new “in” look? Both Microsoft and Sony (VAIO VGX-TP1) had them on show. I guess they had to compete with Apple without ripping off the square with rounded corners look. The circle is the new square?
3) TVs
I wonder how much electricity Sharp’s 108V LCD consumes (and how much it costs). My guess? It is more expensive than Panasonic’s 103V PDP to buy, but runs on maybe 20-30% less electricity. Which would still mean drawing more than a kiloWatt of power, which is not very green at all. I wonder how they managed the backlighting of such a wide panel. I guess edge lighting with CCFLs around the perimeter just won’t hack it at those dimensions. So, that would mean either a wasteful CCFL array on the back plane, or a similarly positioned LED array. Former would mean increased energy consumption, latter, increased cost.
Bring on the next generation of RPTVs. Expect to see a 60 inch RPTV (with a depth of between 4 and 6 inches) at around the $2000 price point in about a year, with electricity consumption slashed to a third of that found in similarly sized FPDs based on competing technology.
4) Audio
Really not much to really get me excited here, lots of wireless networking on show, with “digital active” loudspeakers. Colour me sceptical. A vibrating box isn’t the best place to put sensitive electronics, and you still need to shell out for mains cabling, so it isn’t truly wireless in any case. It is OK for run of the mill stuff, but at the high end? Not convinced. I’m still looking to upgrade my CD front end, the search continues. Toying with the idea of a PC based system as discussed previously. (got a new cartridge for my record player last summer - but that is in storage because of the move)
Looking forward to 2007 January 4, 2007
Posted by fukumimi in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Happy new year to all.
2006 ended with me picking up a nasty cold which had me in bed for 3 full days. Last day at work was the 28th, and we had our usual workplace end of year gathering, after which I ended up in a pub. I probably should have gone straight home as I’d been living with a sore throat for the previous few days, no doubt not unrelated to the full blown cold that my partner had been suffering from since the weekend. (Which meant, amongst other things, that Christmas was a non-event, I having been relegated to nursing duty for the weekend and thereafter)
Next morning, the first day of a 6 day break, I woke up with the initial symptoms of a cold. Despite that, I went off to do some shopping, which probably made things worse. [The other half was still feeling poorly, and we were due to take delivery of our new Wii that day so I ventured out to buy some games and accessories for our new toy, which was our Christmas present to ourselves - although it didn't arrive in time for Christmas]
I ended up in bed until the evening of the 31st, by which time I had probably gotten over the worst of the cold, and I ventured out to my usual annual end-of-year party. New Year’s Day meant my usual pilgrimage to accompany my gran (who was looking as healthy as ever) and the rest of the gaggle which constitute the extended family on my mother’s side to visit and tend to grandfather’s grave. Having spent New Year’s Eve drinking into the early hours, and then getting up at the usual time to make the hour long trip took a toll on my body, and I ended up back in bed for most of the first two days of 2007. So, not much of a New Year holiday to report.
Still suffering from a chesty cough, but over the worst and am back and hitting the ground running.
The first couple of months of 2007 look like they might be pretty busy work-wise, but there are some exciting things in the pipeline.
For this blog, one theme for 2007 is blogging more about venture capital topics, in particular the Japanese VC scene, and how it differs from other geographies. Otherwise, much of the same.
Here’s hoping that 2007 will be a prosperous year for all of us.
