The use of solar power at schools in Japan has grown exponentially in recent years with the government's School New Deal initiative, which aims to broadly enrich the nation's educational facilities.
As part of the economic crisis countermeasures set forth in 2009, the School New Deal initiative advocates for the fundamental reform of facilities to promote schools that have the appropriate educational environment for the 21st Century.
Specifically, the initiative plans to promptly pursue higher earthquake-resistant building standards and to utilize solar power generation under the broader concepts of improved environmental impact and enhanced information & communications technology (ICT).??
In April 2009, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology set a target of increasing the number of public elementary, middle and high schools with solar power installations to 12,000. ??Since the start of the School New Deal initiative, the number of schools Kyocera has supplied to has increased dramatically, with over 1,200 schools in the country now utilizing the power of the sun with Kyocera modules.
In the market for school installations in Japan, Kyocera holds the No.1 share with over 40 percent. Kyocera believes this market share is a direct result of the company's reputation for supplying highly reliable products and its ability to provide engineering services on a case-by-case basis for rapid implementation.
??Use of solar power at schools is part of the larger trend of growth in Japan's public- and industrial-use solar power market, which has expanded by roughly 3.6-times* in the five-year period from FY2005 to FY2010. As solar power installations in this market segment typically require a diverse range of systems to optimize performance depending on the specific site, Kyocera's business model in Japan is able to apply its design and installation technologies which have been cultivated through the company's many years of experience in the solar industry.??
Kyocera will continue to strive for the further implementation of clean energy solutions at schools by using the company's strengths which have been developed over its 35-year history in the solar industry.
* Based on data from the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association (JPEA)
