## Column : The “UCHI-ECO (Home-Eco)” Campaign

In October 2006, Mr. Masatoshi Wakabayashi, Minister of the Environment, announced the launch of the “UCHI-ECO (home-eco)” campaign, which aims to promote people’s daily efforts at home in the fields of food, clothing and housing to global warming countermeasures.

This campaign makes specific energy-saving proposals to the general public in the fields of clothing, food and housing. They include home-version “Cool Biz” and “Warm Biz” to seek comfortable indoor living in summer/winter while limiting air conditioning, the wise choice of food that would cool down your body in summer and warm up your body in winter, the effort to turn off electric appliances immediately after use, and the use of energy-saving fluorescent lights or bulbs (http://www.team-6jp/).

Figure 3-4-19: An example of the “UCHI-ECO (home-eco)” campaign logo

conditioning in the summer while seeking clever ways to spend hot days comfortably, and the winter counterpart “Warm Biz” campaign are respectively estimated to have reduced $ CO_{2} $ emissions by about 1.14 million tons (summer of 2006) and about 1.41 million tons (fall and winter of 2005). The “UCHI-ECO (home-eco)” campaign has also been increasing its participants, where people are advised to global warming countermeasures by making daily efforts at home in the field of food, clothing and housing.

Thus, development of national campaigns play important roles in promoting global warming countermeasures. The awareness of individual citizens has significant impact on the effective utilization of $ CO_{2} $ emission-reduction technologies and products, and national campaigns are expected to produce enormous energy-saving effects, if promoted successfully. Therefore, it is necessary to promote them extensively through combined efforts among diverse entities, while seeking ecology-conscious lifestyles.

## Section 5: Visions of the Future Utilization of Global Warming Countermeasures

In making our efforts to global warming countermeasures, technology plays important roles. This section will explain visions of how Japanese technologies could be effectively utilized for promoting global warming countermeasures into the future, with the focus on the following three directions: the promotion of thorough utilization of available technologies, new innovative technologies and the development of technologies for ensuring harmony between nature and people.

### 1. Ensuring Diffusion and thorough Utilization of Available Energy-Saving Technologies

Section 4 explained specific technologies pertaining to global warming countermeasures closely related to people’s daily lives and discussed how they are actually being used in the commercial and residential sectors (households, office, etc.) in particular and how they effectively reduce $ CO_{2} $ emissions. The promotion of replacement of conventional models with energy-saving models with the said technologies can be expected to produce substantial effects in terms of $ CO_{2} $ emission reduction.

The first part of this section will explain the potential for $ CO_{2} $ emission reduction expected from an extensive introduction of energy-saving equipment to households, offices, buildings, etc.

## (1) Simulative analysis of the potential $ CO_{2} $ emission reduction expected from the introduction of energy-saving equipment to households

### a. Introducing high-efficiency home appliances

Here are three estimation examples as to the potential $ CO_{2} $ emission reduction expected from the replacement of conventional appliances with energy-saving models together with the introduction of some improvements (heat insulation, etc.) to house fittings.