Environment

Japanese companies are forming an alliance this month to disclose the risks posed by climate change to their businesses, taking a step toward greater transparency in an area where corporate Japan has lagged its Western peers.

The government began the annual Cool Biz campaign on Tuesday to promote workplace energy conservation by dressing more casually.

The Asian Development Bank plans to spend $80 billion through 2030 to build infrastructure that will help protect Asian countries from the impact of climate change, a central topic at the board of governors meeting that began here Wednesday.

Japan will require automakers to improve fleetwide fuel economy, including electric vehicles, by roughly 30% from the fiscal 2020 target by fiscal 2030, as it seeks to account for the environmental impact of Earth-friendly autos while still promoting their use.

Tokyu Corp. on Monday began running the Setagaya Line in Tokyo with electricity generated 100 percent from renewable energy sources.

In the 12 cities, towns and villages in Fukushima Prefecture that received evacuation orders from the central government or other entity in the wake of the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the conversion of farmland mainly for the installation of mega-solar power plants has continued apace.

Japanese financial services company Orix will set up a joint venture with Toray Industries and a Chinese partner in March to make and sell equipment aimed at making China's low-quality tap water drinkable.

A major earthquake with a magnitude of between 7 and 8 is highly likely in most undersea areas along the Japan Trench off eastern Japan within the next 30 years, a government panel said Tuesday.

The president of a chocolate company and a farmer on Hahajima island, one of the Ogasawara Islands about 1,000 kilometers south of central Tokyo, have joined forces to grow cacao trees on Hahajima, with plans to sell their “Tokyo Cacao” chocolate this autumn.

Plastic pollution in the ocean has become one of the world’s most urgent environmental problems. Footage of vast fields of floating plastic debris between California and Hawaii — now commonly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — have driven home the gravity of the problem, with scientists and environmental groups warning that the colossal oceanic mess imperils the ecosystem and human health.