Environment

Sumitomo Corp. has joined geothermal power projects in Indonesia designed to eventually generate 400 megawatts worth of electricity, a small step toward the trading house's long-range goal of deriving 30% of its total power output capacity from renewable sources.

While the Japanese government weathers criticism at a United Nations climate conference over its failure to renounce coal, the country's private sector is using the event to showcase technologies that can make a carbon-free society possible.

The race to develop new materials for cars is heating up among chemical and paper producers in Japan, as automakers look for ways to make their products more fuel efficient and eco-friendly.

Hitachi has landed a contract worth over 350 million pounds ($460 million) to build and maintain train cars for a British high-speed rail system.

A startup that’s friendly to both the environment and your wallet is two steps away from a $1 million prize. Renewable-energy company Looop Inc., which says it can slash household electricity costs to a third of what customers pay now, advanced to the final rounds of Startup World Cup 2020 in Tokyo on Thursday.

Japan's largest family restaurant operator will stop using plastic containers for takeout orders and deliveries in December, becoming the first big player here to do so as the world turns away from single-use plastics.

A mass extinction event 11.6 million years ago was apparently due to a huge meteor impact in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Minami-Torishima island 1,860 kilometers southeast of Tokyo in the Ogasawara island chain, say researchers.

After recent typhoons ravaged the nation’s power grid and disrupted services to almost 1.4 million customers, the government is encouraging homeowners to invest in storage systems, seeking to marry batteries with existing rooftop solar capacity to create backup electricity networks.

The city of Kyoto is exploring a possible sale of debt to finance environmental, social and governance projects, in what may be the country’s only such municipal bond after Tokyo, the mayor has said.

From transportation to holiday homes, the “sharing economy” is gaining traction worldwide, and in typhoon- and earthquake-prone Japan the concept is increasingly seen as instrumental to disaster management.