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The Environment

FSTJ 2017-10 Cover Image

Vol. 53, No. 6, October 2017

In the Fujitsu Group, Environmental Action Plan (Stage VIII) was formulated in response to the adoption of the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and put into effect in April 2016. This special issue introduces environmental initiatives both inside and outside Japan targeting business offices, data centers, and value chains as well as the Fujitsu Group environmental strategy, solutions, technologies, and R&D activities toward the creation of a sustainable society.

Japanese version: Magazine FUJITSU (Vol. 68, No. 2, March 2017)

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Preface

Special Issue on the Environment (461 KB)
Corporate Executive Officer Hiromu Kawakami, pp.1-2

Overview

Environmental Management at Fujitsu Group (577 KB)
Mitsuru Otagiri, Hiroyuki Kawata, Yuka Maezawa, Hideyuki Kanemitsu, pp.3-8
The year 2015 saw the establishment of international targets for realizing a sustainable society, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the UN General Assembly and the Paris Agreement targets adopted at the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Proactive efforts to meet these targets are expected not only from nations and regions but also from the private sector. The Fujitsu Group formulated the Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan (Stage VIII) on the basis of two pillars: "contributing to society through the development of ICT solutions" and "reducing the environmental impact of our business." This plan has been followed since April 2016. We are working to make contributions to society by providing information and communications technology (ICT) services and products that lead to a sustainable society. We are working to reduce the environmental impact of Fujitsu's own businesses by aiming for the Paris Agreement's reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions and engaging in initiatives to achieve it along the entire value chain. This paper introduces Fujitsu Group's environmental management activities, including our Environmental Action Plan (Stage VIII) and specific initiatives.

ICT Contributing to Realization of Sustainable Society

Research and Development of Green ICT for a Sustainable World (1.18 MB )
Tsutomu Tanaka, Tetsuyoshi Shiota, Katsuji Ebisu, Mitsuo Ozaki, pp.9-16
In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the UN General Assembly as a global target to be met by 2030. The 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in November 2016, when the Paris Agreement, aimed at the creation of a low-carbon society, came into force. The world is now taking steps toward solving the globally shared problem of climate change. In addition, it must address a multitude of emerging complex issues related to society, the environment, and the economy. Information and communications technology (ICT) has been a useful tool to tackle such issues and has been successfully applied in many areas. To enable faster response to complex issues, Fujitsu is developing Green ICT services that leverage prediction technology based on big data analysis. The aim is to develop services that offer logical and accurate decision making, with the flexibility of being applicable to a variety of contexts. In this paper, we present a methodology and a technology related to the area of environmental research: a "natural-capital accounting methodology" that can be used to assess natural resources for preserving biodiversity and an "environment, society, and economic analysis technology" that can be used to. Their use can help visualize local attributes, elucidate locally specific problems, and predict the effectiveness of alternative measures.
Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through ICT Services (648 KB)
Takayuki Ono, Kenichi Iida, Seiya Yamazaki, pp.17-22
In 2015, two major international frameworks were adopted regarding environmental and social sustainability. One was the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and especially the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ratified during the UN General Assembly held in September. The other was the Paris Agreement, which was approved in December 2015 through the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and when into force in November 2016. The Fujitsu Group aims to play its part in achieving these global targets. One of our goals is to "contribute to the sustainable development of society through the provision of information and communications technology (ICT) services," set out in the Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan (Stage VIII) that started in FY2016. This paper explains how the SDGs relate to corporate activities, and presents the Groups thinking, assessment methods regarding its contributions to achieving the SDGs through the provision of ICT services, and specific examples.
New Artificial Intelligence Technology Improving Fuel Efficiency and Reducing CO2 Emissions of Ships through Use of Operational Big Data (847 KB)
Taizo Anan, Hiroyuki Higuchi, Naoki Hamada, pp.23-28
Fuel cost and CO2 emissions in operating ships are major challenges for the maritime industry. A large marine transport company spends more than 2.6 billion U.S. dollars on fuel every year. In order to reduce fuel consumption as well as CO2 emissions from ships, it is crucial to be able to accurately calculate the impact of winds and waves on ship speed and fuel efficiency. Normally, existing ship performance estimation technologies rely on experiments with model ships in tanks of water, or on physics model simulations. However, they do not take into account the complicated interactions of winds, waves, and sea currents that influence the state of ships at real sea waters, resulting in large margins of error. Against this background, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a technology to visualize ship performance. In addition to weather and sea conditions including winds, waves, and sea currents during actual ship operation, it collects engine log data and ship operation data such as location and ship speed, and posts it to the cloud, and then analyzes these data using high-dimensional statistical analysis that we developed. Applying this technology to a university-owned test ship and some merchant ships resulted in highly accurate estimation of ship speed and fuel consumption for each of the ships, with error of 5% or less. We also evaluated this technology through simulation and verified that it can improve fuel efficiency significantly. This paper describes this technology to predict ship performance in real sea waters, which is key to reducing ship fuel consumption, with some examples of system configurations.
Greening Throughout Product Life Cycle (733 KB)
Masayuki Hamakawa, Katsuji Ebisu, Koichi Kimura, Tetsuji Ishikawa, Yoshiko Shinomura, pp.29-39
The Fujitsu Group is working to mitigate the environmental impact of its products over the entire product life cycle. We have been conducting environmental impact assessments on our products since FY1993 in an effort to promote environmentally conscious product designs. These efforts have led to a reduction in power consumption, economization of resources, improvement in recyclability, and elimination of hazardous materials through chemical substance management. Moreover, Fujitsu is also promoting the development of "Super Green Products" that achieve the highest level of environmental performance. Since FY2013, we have been particularly proactive in improving product energy and resource efficiency, making them important themes in offering customers products that have lower environmental impact and higher performance in one package. This was set as one of the goals in the Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan. This paper presents an overview of previous initiatives of the Fujitsu Group in developing environmentally conscious product designs and describes how we are working to enhance the energy and resource efficiency of our products in the Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan [Stage VII (FY2013-FY2015) and Stage VIII (FY2016-FY2018)]. It also introduces some of the technologies we have developed for achieving environmentally conscious product designs.

Environmentally Conscious Activities Throughout Value Chain

Global Warming Mitigation Initiatives in Plants and Offices of the Fujitsu Group (826 KB)
Hideaki Namiki, Toshiharu Nakano, Masayuki Nihei, Hiroyuki Ito, Kazuaki Sato, Masayuki Kitajima, pp.40-48
In July 2015, the Japanese Government adopted a draft target to achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 26% from the FY2013 level in FY2030, and submitted this pledge to the UN before the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris. Based on this pledge, the CO2 emissions reduction target for the Fujitsu Group for FY2018 would be 4.2% from 2013 levels. The Group is in fact striving to surpass this figure, and aiming to reduce emissions by more than 5%, as set forth in the Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan (Stage VIII). This paper presents our Group-wide global warming mitigation initiatives, which we pursue in our plants and offices. These include examples of our continued efforts in the facility-based energy-saving programs, and development of energy-efficiency technologies for manufacturing plants.
Energy Saving Measures based on ISO 50001 at Augsburg Site in Germany (818 KB)
Thomas Bernhardt, Hellmut Böttner, pp.49-54
The Augsburg site of Fujitsu Technology Solutions in Germany is actively involved in an environmental project focusing on energy savings. This project assumes the observance of international standards and the participation of company employees. Detailed energy analyses began in 2012 and are based on European policy and regulations on energy savings and international standard ISO 50001 for energy management systems (EnMS). Measures to reduce the amount of energy consumption established after the management department compiled the results of these analyses and gathered ideas from all employees led to a significant decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and costs. Specifically, by decreasing the amount of energy consumption, they reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 15% and the power consumption of most products developed and manufactured at this site by 20%. The latter is especially appealing to customers who seek energy saving performance in the products they purchase since a reduction in power usage represents a tangible benefit. This paper introduces energy saving activities based on ISO 50001 at the Fujitsu Technology Solutions site in Augsburg, Germany.
Realization of Energy-efficient, Green Data Centers (786 KB)
Seiji Kawaguchi, Shinji Azegami, Yasunobu Suzuki, Ryohei Yamate, pp.55-61
The energy consumption of data centers has been increasing with the growth of cloud computing services. There has thus been a growing interest in the environmental performance of data centers. Fujitsu Group added the target of "achieving green data centers" to the Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan in 2012 and established the Green Datacenter (GDC) Committee in pursuit of lowering the environmental load of data centers in Japan and abroad. First, we benchmarked 34 major data centers and identified key challenges for short- and mid- to long-term periods. Second, we prepared guidelines specifying improvement measures for these data centers as a basis for action. For this, we created a dashboard that enables the user to determine the results of measures in terms of energy consumption and efficiency. Concurrently, a collaboration system was developed that enables the results to be promptly shared among members of the GDC Committee in order to promote this initiative. We have also been working on a number of long-term projects such as an innovative air conditioning technology using artificial intelligence and a submersion liquid cooling system for servers. This paper reports Fujitsu's various efforts to realize green data centers.
Fujitsu Group's Green Logistics (506 KB)
Kazuhiko Niwa, pp.62-66
The Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan (Stage VIII) has been in operation since FY2016, and one of its thematic objectives is to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain. In the logistics division, we aim to achieve a 2% reduction in CO2 emissions per sales amount from transport. Working with our suppliers and clients, we proactively pursue a variety of activities to reduce environmental burden in the group-wide transport practices (domestic, overseas intraregional, and international transport), which we call green logistics. The Fujitsu Group started various green logistics initiatives in April 2006, even before the Amendment to the Act on the Rational Use of Energy (known as the Amended Energy Conservation Act) was implemented. The amended act required not only freight forwarders, but also shippers to join in efforts for energy conservation. While the act is effective only within Japan, the Fujitsu Group extends the scope of these initiatives to its global value chain. This paper describes these activities of green logistics pursued at the Fujitsu Group.
Fujitsu Group's Green Procurement (633 KB)
Masami Osanai, Satoshi Wakasugi, Takahisa Namiki, Kensuke Shinohara, Eiko Onuma, Taeko Miyazawa, pp.67-73
The Fujitsu Group places conservation of the global environment at the top of its business priorities, has formulated the Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan, and is pursuing strategic, sustainable environmental activities in all its business areas. As part of the initiatives for that, the procurement division has been practicing green purchasing since 2001. This involves ensuring product compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and providing support for clients with their environmental activities. Specifically, we request our suppliers to have an environmental management system (EMS), and ensure the products we deliver contain no regulated chemical substances. We also request them to have a chemical substance management system (CMS). In keeping with a global awareness of environmental issues, our environmental activities also encompass the reduction of CO2 emissions, protection of biodiversity, and conservation of water resources. This paper describes the performance of the procurement division in the Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan (Stage VII) and our efforts to mitigate CO2 emissions across the supply chain, which is one of the goals set forth in the Fujitsu Group Environmental Action Plan (Stage VIII) that started in FY2016.
GaN HEMT Technology for Environmentally Friendly Power Electronics (816 KB)
Tatsuya Hirose, Miki Imai, Keiji Watanabe, pp.74-80
Gallium nitride (GaN) is a type of compound semiconductor material called a wide-bandgap semiconductor that has already found practical use as an LED light source. A high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) made of GaN features low operating resistance and a high breakdown voltage, which makes it promising as a next-generation power semiconductor that can raise the efficiency and miniaturize diverse types of power and energy equipment. GaN HEMTs have already been put to use as transmission power amplifiers in high-frequency wireless communication systems and radar systems. Coupled with the recent establishment of technology for manufacturing GaN HEMT structures having high breakdown voltages (600 V and greater) on a Si substrate using large-diameter, low-cost wafers, the development of high-efficiency power electronics equipment as switching power supplies in data servers and personal computers is progressing at a rapid pace. At Fujitsu Laboratories, we are moving forward with research and development of switching power supplies using GaN HEMTs for application to future information and communications technology (ICT) products. An AC adapter using Fujitsu's GaN HEMT technology was recently praised for its high performance and contributions to the environment, and for this achievement, Fujitsu was awarded the Grand Prize of the 26th Global Environment Award. This paper describes the design technology for applying GaN HEMT technology to switching power supplies and reports on the contributions of this technology to energy savings.

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