Newsletter

Discussion on global warming and climate change is heated and accelerated this year. This issue is handled internationally by United Nations under UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

A s one of the activities of UNFCCC, COP14 was held in Poland in Dec. 2008, and COP15 will be held in Copenhagen in Denmark in Dec 2009. Japanese Government has announced that the target value of warming gas reduction in Japan will be decided not later than June 2009, to be in time for COP15.

I had the opportunity to attend the Beijing High-Level Conference on Climate Change in November 2008, as a member of Japanese Delegation. This Conference was held jointly by Chinese Government and United Nations in preparation for COP14, discussing how smoothly technology development and transfer would be fulfilled from developed countries to under-developed countries. And I strongly felt that global warming issue is no more than merely a scientific discussion but it is also highly complicated economical, political, and diplomatic issue. Discussion among developed countries is not enough. There must be a comprehensive solution which can be accepted to under-developed countries.

The purpose of our Endowed Research Unit: Advanced Energy Conversion Engineering is to develop highest efficiency conversion technology realizing energy saving and reduction in CO2 emission simultaneously. I am strongly convinced it is necessary to accelerate our research and development so that we can contribute internationally by smoothly transferring these accomplished technologies to all over the world.

In this connection we are planning to hold a technical symposium titled as "Energy Strategy to overcome Global Warming" on June 12th, 2009. The detailed program will be announced in this homepage as soon as it is available.