CHIBA, Japan — There were gadgets and robots galore at Japan’s premier electronics show this week. But one of the biggest attractions wasn’t anything you could touch — it was an energy-efficient city of the future.
For the first time, the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies devoted one area of the show floor to selling a vision of urban life in 2020 and beyond.
The Japanese version of the so- called “smart city” exists in a post-fossil-fuel world. Alternative sources such as the sun, wind and nuclear power are harnessed in mass quantities. That power is then distributed to buildings, homes and electric cars connected to one another through “smart grids,” which monitor usage throughout the network to maximize efficiency.
The goal is to drastically cut carbon emissions — which many scientists believe cause global warming — ideally to zero. The bigger dream is for the smart city to become Japan’s next big export.
The city of Yokohama, just southwest of Tokyo, is the site of a social and infrastructure experiment to create a smart city for the rest of the world to emulate. Launched this year, the Yokohama Smart City Project is a five-year pilot program with a consortium of seven Japanese companies — Nissan, Panasonic, Toshiba, Tokyo Electric Power, Tokyo Gas, Accenture’s Japan unit and Meidensha.
On Tuesday, Toyota separately announced the launch of its own home smart-grid system in Japan to coincide with its plug-in hybrid cars going on sale in early 2012.
