Environment

Japanese companies have a reputation for resisting change. Utilities, in Japan and other countries, are often seen as especially conservative and uninventive. But Japan's energy companies are now breaking away from this stereotype, as deregulation reorders the energy sector; advances in energy technology and climate concerns disrupt business as usual; and the aftereffects of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster continue to reverberate.

Toyota Motor Corp. and weather information provider Weathernews Inc. have started tests to improve the accuracy of rain forecasts by using real-time data from networked cars’ windshield wipers.

Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance plans to introduce, by the end of March 2020 at the earliest, a flood insurance policy for businesses that pays out the same day that sensors detect a disaster.

Innovations such as roads that reflect heat and water-absorbing pavement that will help the 2020 Olympic Games be a carbon- neutral event could also be adopted by other cities looking to mitigate climate risks, urban experts said.

Japanese trading house Itochu will partner with BYD, China's leading producer of electric cars, on a venture that gives automotive batteries new life as storage for renewable energy.

A project to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure at retail stores, such as supermarkets, to is set to get underway.

Japanese companies have committed to move away from the practice of burning plastic waste and embrace a cycle of reusing materials as they risk losing environmentally conscious investors to U.S. and European peers making better progress on recycling.

Japanese researcher Akira Yoshino, who was named a winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry, said Monday he plans to highlight environmental issues in his speech at the award ceremony in Sweden in December.

Although marine plastic has become a prominent environmental issue in recent years, plastic is too valuable a resource to ever truly go away, so effectively managing such waste and placing it in a circular economy system would be the most efficient way to solve the issue, experts at a Tokyo seminar said last week.