Page 466 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

436 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

SMART COMMUNITY POLICY ENTREPRENEURS
Japan’s National Resilience initiative started in early 2013 with only three
items on the table: the linear shinkansen, cross-laminated timber, and methane
hydrates (Furuya, 2017). However, the involvement of a broad range of energy
and disaster expertise has progressively expanded the initiative’s ambit.
Notably, planning and financing smart energy systems became central to
resilience in large part due to the role of Kashiwagi Takao. As noted, Kashi-
wagi is not only Japan’s foremost energy policy expert but also the central
figure in a powerful intellectual community, one whose policy making influence
has greatly increased since 3-11. After 3-11, Kashiwagi’s main contribution, as
a policy entrepreneur, has been to forge a broad publiceprivate coalition that
links decarbonizing smart energy systems (heat and power grids) with disaster
resilience, spatial planning, and local economic development.
Kashiwagi has long been a dogged champion of smart communities. He
designed Japan’s first smart community, a 100% renewable microgrid project,
for the 2005 Aichi World’s Fair (Kashiwagi, 2011). He has consistently argued
that the focus of Japan’s public works should shift from roads and bridges to
resilient, smart energy systems that maximize efficiency and the uptake of
renewable energy (Kashiwagi et al., 2001; Kashiwagi, 2009, 2010, pp. 10e15,
2015a,b, 2016, pp. 178e179).
In addition, Kashiwagi was ideally positioned, organizationally and intel-
lectually, when the 3-11 crisis erupted. He had credibility with the business
community as well as a thorough understanding of evolving energy paradigms
and the crucial role of integrated policy. As an academic, Kashiwagi was
professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology from 2007, and in 2012 , he
became specially appointed professor and head of the International Research
7
Center of Advanced Energy Systems for Sustainability (AES Center). The
AES Center was inaugurated in September 2009, with funding from some of
Japan’s largest firms. Its 200 specialist researchers in environment and energy
are focused on solar and fuel cells. It also collaborates with the smart energy
divisions of the leading power, gas, and other firms in Japan’s energy business,
along with blue-chip firms in construction, home building, engineering, auto
making, and other areas. Moreover, the AES Center includes 15 local gov-
ernments (prefectures and cities), many of which are exemplar smart com-
munities. The AES Center also clearly understood the crisis to be an
opportunity to accelerate the deployment of smart communities that maximize
renewable energy, local leadership, resilience, and other priorities (Gotou,
2017).
Kashiwagi has long been a top-rank policy advisor. In the years preceding
3-11, he was member, and often chair, of METI’s main energy policy-making

7. The English language version of the AES Center’s website is available at the following URL:
https://aes.ssr.titech.ac.jp/english.