### 2. Promoting the Development of New Innovative Technologies

Section 4 and the previous subsection of this section (Section 5) explained effective currently available technologies with a focus on the commercial, residential and transport sectors. In addition to those existing technologies, there are many potential technologies at the RD&D stage, and if those potential technologies come into widespread use in a practical manner in the future, further $ CO_{2} $ emission reduction can be achieved in the said sectors, covering offices, households and motor vehicles. Promotion of technology development could invite various innovations in our socioeconomic activities. Moreover, those innovations could induce further technological innovations, which we hope will facilitate our efforts to global warming countermeasures.

### 3. Ensuring Harmony with Nature

Previous sections and subsections discussed the significance of technology development and wide utilization of available effective technologies in pursuing our measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As explained in Chapter 2, human beings are part of ecosystems and our survival depends on the integrity of ecosystems. Therefore, it is necessary for us to ensure harmony between human activities and ecosystems, especially when we develop and introduce new technologies.

When we think of global warming countermeasures from this standpoint, utilization of natural or biological mechanisms is one of the important fields for future technological innovation. For example, in the field of agriculture, it is hoped that an appropriate balance will be maintained between the measures to cope with the natural environment and changes thereto such as cropping period optimization or breed improvement and the R&D projects aimed at strengthening environmental resistance with the utilization of genetic recombination technique. Also, there are projects to study artificial photosynthesis. They use solar energy to synthesize oxygen and organic matters from water and carbon dioxide or decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Figure 3-5-7: Artificial photosynthesis

The goal of our development and utilization of global warming countermeasures is not limited to the reduction of GHG emissions in Japan. Japanese technologies and embedded products are strongly hoped to contribute to the international society, particularly the Asia-Pacific, not only in terms of the contribution to the reduction of GHG emissions or solutions to energy issues but also to the mitigation of other environmental problems such as air pollution. Also, as energy-saving needs are getting stronger and stronger all over the world today, demand for our technologies is estimated to be quite strong in the international market. In this respect, the development and promotion of our energy-saving technologies are considered to be quite meaningful in terms of economical benefits and improvement of international competitiveness of Japanese industries and businesses.

As discussed in Section 1 above, our society needs to be transformed into a sustainable one as accelerating global warming becomes evident. In the course of pursuing environmental protection, including global warming mitigation, our society benefits from technology in various ways as mentioned above. If we promote effective utilization of our technologies with a focus on the above-mentioned three directions, such technology will continue to play an important role in our society as a key element of global warming countermeasures, and the materialization of such innovations will open the door to a new society.