Editor’s Top 5 Feature Stories in 2022: Sustainability

At the beginning of this year, Panasonic announced its “Panasonic GREEN IMPACT” initiative, a corporate commitment to reduce CO₂ emissions between now and 2050. As part of this long-term environmental strategy, Panasonic is showcasing a number of initiatives, including Sustainable Smart Towns and a manufacturing facility powered entirely by hydrogen fuel cells. These demonstrate how the company is really “walking the talk” when it comes to creating a more sustainable future. 

The following are our Editor’s Top 5 Feature Stories on Sustainability published in the Panasonic Global Newsroom this year.

From the air it looks like any other modern housing estate, with circles and rows of white houses grouped neatly around a central plaza. A closer look reveals that every house has solar panels on its roof. When you reach ground level, you notice the careful landscaping, the abundance of trees and the absence of utility poles.

In this article, we introduce the futuristic complex of Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town, which opened in 2014, the first of three such urban initiatives by Panasonic.

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In this article we focused on Tsunashima SST, the second of the three Panasonic Sustainable Smart Towns. It was created through the redevelopment of the site of a former Matsushita factory. While the other two sustainable smart towns have been developed as residential communities promoting healthy lifestyles and well-being, Tsunashima SST is primarily a commercial venture; it aims to nurture the kind of collaborative innovation among companies that will help create more of these communities in the future.

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The last of the three Sustainable Smart Towns to open, Suita SST is located in a busy northern suburb of Osaka. It has been designed to facilitate multi-generational living, and the 23,000 square meter site—around the size of three soccer pitches—will house 362 residential units. These include condominiums for families and for seniors, and compact units with shared facilities designed for single-person households.

The Suita complex additionally hosts a large wellness complex incorporating serviced housing for the elderly and child-care facilities. A commercial complex with two floors of shops and a community park completes the community.

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Growing awareness of the need to protect the environment and avoid climate change is prompting a re-think about the way electricity is produced, stored and used. There is increasing focus on the “decentralization” of power generation and the use of renewable energy sources such as solar power and wind. 

Recent advances in solar panel and fuel cell technology, many of them spearheaded by Panasonic, are bringing the goal of abundant clean energy generated from renewable sources much closer. At its Kusatsu manufacturing plant in Japan’s Shiga prefecture, Panasonic is showcasing these advances and providing a glimpse into the future of clean power in a trial facility believed to be the first of its kind in the world.

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In common with other leading companies, Panasonic is at the forefront of global initiatives to reduce CO₂ emissions—not only those resulting from its own operations, but those generated through the use of its products by consumers. A key step to achieving these reductions is agreement on common standards of measurement and reporting, especially that of “Avoided Emissions Contributions.”

In support of this, Panasonic announced in October this year that it had joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a body that conducts research into and advocates for progress on relevant economic, environmental and social issues. The company subsequently took part in the Global Green Transformation Conference 2022, hosted by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Tokyo.

See here for further details.