Page 456 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

426 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

These data are not especially surprising. University of California (Berke-
ley) Professor Dana Bruntrock, an expert on Japanese and other green building
technologies, points out that Japanese home builders have long been involved
in energy conservation and disaster resiliency (Bruntrock, 2017). The shock of
3-11 provided them with enormous incentives to build smart homes and smart
communities (Honda, 2014).
Interestingly, Japan is generally not seen as a significant player in the
microgrid market, which is dominated by North America. Indeed, the US
power microgrid and DHC lobbies joined forces on May 18, 2016, when the
International District Energy Association (IDEA) and the Microgrid Resources
Coalition merged to push for a more rapid diffusion of their resilient, efficient,
and distributed infrastructure. As IDEA President and chief executive officer
Rob Thornton argued on the day of the merger, “we are witnessing a paradigm
shift from remote central station power plants toward more localized,
distributed generation for enhanced reliability, resiliency and energy effi-
ciency, especially in cities, communities and campuses” (IDEA Industry
News, 2016).
Yet Hitachi, Toshiba, and other Japanese firms are among the industry’s
leaders, powerfully incentivized by the impact of 3-11. Japanese firms
dominate their domestic market and have an increasing presence in the US and
other markets. In fact, Hitachi’s smart community project at Kashiwanoha (in
Chiba Prefecture) came to include the firm’s first microgrid because 3-11
impelled a “rethink on the design of the country’s energy infrastructure”
(Wood, 2015).
Certainly Japanese smart communities include the digital signage and other
ICT-based amenities that feature prominently in smart cities elsewhere (Maras,
2017). However, Japan’s focus is different, and perhaps more apt as an in-
dustrial policy. Fig. 21.1 tells us that smart energy networks and decarbonizing
energy inputs are the core of Japanese smart communities. Such networks are
critical to modern industrial policy. Smart networks are, qua networks, com-
parable to the roads that were core networks in the Fordist economy and the
railroads that marked the steam-based economy. As Nicholas Stern, the leading
economist on climate change and energy, argues in his 2015 book Why Are We
Waiting? The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change:

[e]conomic history tells us that networks, be they power grids or railways,
played a central role in past economic transformations: grids enabled great
surges of creativity and innovation and led to opportunity and growth across the
economy.More effective temporal and spatial management of the energy sys-
tem, for instance with smart technologies or increased flexibility of the energy
markets, could aid in the management of low-carbon generation, reduce the need
for extra infrastructure, and unlock the potential for renewable energy to meet
both base and peak demand for energy
Stern (2015, pp. 48e49).