Environmental communication

In April 2007, we introduced a new Panasonic's Environmental Mark, ‘eco ideas’ which serves as a symbol to represent our commitment to environmental activities. The ‘eco ideas’ mark will be used as a symbol that indicates our approaches and initiatives toward the environment, aiming to become the No. 1 Green Innovation Company in the Electronics Industry for the 100th anniversary of the Panasonic Group’s founding in 2018.

Panasonic has been building a partnership with the Natural Step since 2001. The Natural Step has identified key requirements for a sustainable society in consensus with scientists, and many environmentally-industrialized countries and corporations refer to these conditions in determining their sustainable strategies.

In fiscal 2011, we requested the Natural Step to review our Green Plan 2018 and other initiatives. We take the opinions voiced by the Natural Step into account in order to make a steady progress in our environmental sustainability management.

In its fiscal 2012 business plan, Panasonic announced that it would respond to the needs deriving from the power shortage and power cuts in east Japan including affected aeras through the promotion of energy-saving equipment, such as LED bulbs, and solutions that combine energy creation, energy storage, and energy management.

As for the permanent recovery of the affected areas, Panasonic clearly described that it would contribute to the recovery through its Comprehensive Solutions for the Entire Home, Entire Building, and Entire Town, which offers energy and security management, and take the initiative towards realizing the vision of a Green Innovation Company.

Panasonic’s Green Plan 2018 can also be highly valued as it is an action plan that states the leadership and commitment to help provide solutions to these global difficulties to realize sustainable energy usage.

The Green Plan 2018 lists development of its Energy System Business as the target for fiscal 2019. We believe that this will be the business through which Panasonic can contribute to international society most. This is because Panasonic can offer the world’s top class technologies in photovoltaic power generation and fuel cell cogeneration systems. In particular, the commercialization of fuel cells for home use is attracting society’s attention as an epochmaking innovation. However, these products can only be beneficial to society when they become widely used. The challenge here is that the demand for these products is still small and therefore production costs are high.

One of Panasonic’s targets for fiscal 2009 is expanding environmental contribution through cooperation with stakeholders. The description states that it is necessary to start working with the supply chain and involve all the relevant parties, including customers, governments, local communities, NGOs, research institutes, experts from different fields, suppliers, distributors, and business partners, in order to generate a “wave of revolution”across the world. We totally agree with this view.

Products can only become widespread in use through cooperating with a number of stakeholders and building concrete strategies and plans.

Panasonic has implemented environmental management and measures internationally. It is notable that the initiatives of each regional management company and promoting the activities that suit to the local geographical and cultural characteristics are highly valued. The long-term eco city projects are starting up in different countries to build a low-carbon society on a global scale.

For example, Stockholm in Sweden is running a low-carbon eco city project called the Stockholm Royal Seaport. In this project, Stockholm has set up targets to reduce CO₂ emissions per resident to 1.5 tons per year by 2020—from the current 6 tons, and further aims at becoming a city that uses no fossil fuels by 2030. In order to achieve such high targets, advanced energy management technology, including the smart grid, must be implemented. Participating in such a project as a technological partner is very appealing.

In fact, Panasonic has already established partnerships with one European smart grid project, with Tianjin eco-city project in China, and with the Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town project—which utilizes Panasonic's former factory site—in Japan. This forward-stepping approach is highly valuable strategy.

In the fiscal 2012 business policy, President Otsubo announced that Panasonic would help establish a new society with new lifestyles in earthquake-affected Northeast Region as a message of regeneration to the world. We suggest considering a long term project of between 10 to 20 years to build a town solely operated using renewable energy, cooperating with local governments and other stakeholderswith high environmental targets in the Northeast region.

We hope that Panasonic will continue to inspire society by new ideas over a long period in order to realize a more comfortable, greener, and safer life than before the earthquake for the 150,000 people who lost their homes through the earthquake and for the many families who were forced to evacuate their homes due to the nuclear power plant disaster.