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Japan bets on ultrathin solar panels to drive next phase of clean energy
Takayuki Taenaka, an official at Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), said the new technology offers multiple gains. 'It's like killing three birds with one stone,' he said.
What are perovskite solar panels?
Named after their crystal structure, perovskite panels are composed of chemical compounds layered just millimetres thick. These flexible, film-like panels can match the power efficiency of conventional polysilicon panels while being 20 times thinner and 10 times lighter.
Their flexibility allows installation on surfaces unsuitable for rigid panels, such as windows, walls, or rooftops unable to support heavy loads. This makes them ideal for densely populated, infrastructure-heavy nations like Japan.
Urban deployment amid limited flat land
Japan already leads major economies in installed solar capacity per square kilometre of flat land. However, its mountainous geography limits room for large-scale solar farms.
Tokyo now aims to generate up to 29 per cent of its electricity from solar energy by FY40—up from under 10 per cent today—by deploying perovskite panels across urban surfaces. Installing these panels on walls, glass windows, and other vertical spaces could turn cityscapes into decentralised solar farms.
Commercial rollout to begin in FY27
Though perovskite solar technology was discovered only in 2009, it is rapidly advancing. Sekisui Chemical, which developed the panels for Expo 2025, plans to begin commercial shipments by the end of this fiscal year. Full-scale production is slated for FY27.
Futoshi Kamiwaki, president of Sekisui Solarfilm—a subsidiary created to scale the product—said perovskite panels have the potential to surpass conventional solar cells in energy efficiency.
Rising efficiency draws more players
Conventional silicon solar cells typically reach 20 per cent efficiency. Sekisui's perovskite panels have achieved 15 per cent in the field. But under lab conditions, the technology has reached nearly 30 per cent, according to Kamiwaki.
This promise has attracted more than a dozen players, including industry heavyweights like Panasonic and Kaneka, who are exploring integration of perovskite cells into window glass and other building materials.
Targeting 20 GW from next-gen solar by 2040
This wave of innovation is expected to support Japan's goal of generating 20 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from next-generation solar technologies—including perovskite panels—by 2040. This output would be equivalent to the power generated by approximately 20 nuclear power plants, significantly advancing the country's energy independence and sustainability targets.
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Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
Diamond trade feels tariff pinch: Indian exports might face 20–25% slump; margin hit may spread to miners, retailers, says Crisil analysis
AI-generated image The US market, which accounts for 35 per cent of Indian natural polished diamond exports in fiscal 2025, is expected to face additional challenges following recent US tariffs and penalties, according to Crisil Ratings. A slowdown in natural diamond demand has already been observed in the US market, officials noted. "Added to this, reduced offtake by retailers post announcement of 10 per cent tariff on Indian exports in April 2025, brought down the share of the US in polished diamond exports to 24 per cent in the first quarter of this fiscal from 37 per cent for the same period last fiscal," said Rahul Guha, Senior Director at Crisil Ratings, quoted by ANI. "In the milieu, the revenue of Indian diamond polishers can decrease a further 20-25 per cent this fiscal to USD 10-11 billion," Guha added. Meanwhile, Himank Sharma, Director, Crisil Ratings, said, "Natural diamond polishers, traditionally operating at thin margins of 4-5 per cent, will have limited ability to absorb the tariff-induced price rise. As a result, miners and retailers may need to step in to absorb some of the price shocks." by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Learn More - How Affiliate Marketing Can Boost Your Income TheDaddest Undo During fiscal 2025, natural diamond export volumes remained restricted due to decreased Chinese demand and US competition from LGD. Despite fourth-quarter sales efforts to avoid tariffs and limited price reductions, natural diamond export revenues declined by 17 per cent to USD 13.3 billion. As the world's leading diamond exporter and primary gold consumer, India holds significant influence in the global market. The US announcement on July 30 by Trump of a 25 per cent tariff on India, along with additional penalties for Russian oil purchases, has caused significant worry amongst Indian Gems and Jewellery sector stakeholders, who anticipate immediate market disruptions, workforce reductions and increased costs for US consumers. Nevertheless, industry leaders remain optimistic, citing India's diversified trade relationships through recent FTAs with the UK, Australia, and the UAE as protective measures, suggesting the US might experience greater long-term consequences than India. Stay informed with the latest business news, updates on bank holidays and public holidays . Discover stories of India's leading eco-innovators at Ecopreneur Honours 2025
Time of India
3 hours ago
- Time of India
Harm or help? Why companies are battling tariffs meant to benefit them
Live Events Dan Digre's family business has been manufacturing speakers in Minnesota for 75 years, clinging on even as his U.S. competitors shut their factories and relocated to company is the kind of American manufacturer that President Donald Trump says his trade policies will protect. But since Trump began imposing tariffs on Chinese exports in 2018 in an effort to help U.S. manufacturers, Digre's company, MISCO, has been forced to offshore some of its manufacturing. Tariffs have pushed up the cost of the foreign parts he needs for his U.S. factory, making it more economical to produce his speakers situation illustrates one of the perils of the president's sweeping tariffs, which are intended to raise the cost of foreign goods and encourage consumers to buy domestically instead. For some companies, the tariffs are giving them a chance to compete with cheap imports, particularly from China But for other manufacturers that do business globally, like MISCO, the tariffs are having the opposite effect. Stiff levies are cutting companies off from supplies and markets they depend on abroad, in ways that could undercut Trump's goals, hurt small manufacturers and weigh on the American company has long manufactured speakers in Minnesota for export, including to a major customer in Canada. His firm relies on certain materials from China, the only place to get many small components needed for speakers. But Digre must now pay a 55% tariff on those Chinese imports. As a result, manufacturing for that customer from the United States no longer makes sense. So Digre has shifted speaker production to a factory in China, where he will export directly to Canada and bypass the United States entirely."We're starting off with a 55% material cost disadvantage to our global competitors," he said. Illogically, he said, the United States charges higher tariffs on speaker parts from China than finished speakers from either China or Vietnam, which also discourages U.S. manufacturing."Making things here and exporting them isn't really feasible as long as these tariffs are in place," he situation stems from the administration's broad-brush approach to tariffs. Trump has applied levies to bananas, bolts, T-shirts and robots, seemingly without regard to whether those industries can or will relocate to the United States. The president has applied tariffs to finished products as well as the parts and raw materials that U.S. factories need, including 50% tariffs on steel and far, Trump's tariffs seem to be benefiting companies that can thrive on serving American customers, particularly those that face tougher competition from China. But for firms that depend on global supply chains and markets, the tariffs the administration is imposing or threatening can be more of a harm than a includes some of the United States' biggest export industries, like the aviation sector, which has been arguing against tariffs on aircraft and parts. It also includes industries the United States has been trying to build up, like semiconductor manufacturing. As the Trump administration considers new chip tariffs in the coming weeks, semiconductor companies have warned that a 25% charge on the machines they need to make chips, which can cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each, would make manufacturing in the United States unviable."It isn't as simple as, you put on a tariff, you incentivize stuff to be made here," Digre said. "It's got to be more strategic."Trump's trade policy is aimed at reversing trends that many in the United States now see as harmful, in which companies moved factories overseas in past decades in search of cheaper a manufacturing conference last month, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, said that offshoring had stripped Americans of family-supporting jobs, and the country of an important source of national security and innovation. It had also created the largest trade deficit "of any country in human history on planet Earth," "a state of affairs that is as unsustainable as is unacceptable," he economists who support the goal of shoring up U.S. manufacturing are skeptical about the administration's approach given it doesn't distinguish between lower-value goods, like shoes and electronic components, and higher-value ones. Many say the cheaper goods are not economical to make in the United States, as opposed to products like airplanes and medical devices that require the advanced manufacturing in which U.S. companies continue to excel."If you were really serious about bringing manufacturing back into the U.S., you'd be doing much more targeted industrial policy," said Dani Rodrik, a Harvard University economist, "versus these across-the-board tariffs, which are an extremely blunt instrument."Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, agreed that the administration had chosen to place significant tariffs on a lot of goods without much U.S. production, or the prospect for it to return. "There is a pretty hefty 'Walmart tariff,' you'd say," he also said the administration's decision to put large tariffs on the materials factories need, including steel, would backfire. U.S. steel is already significantly more expensive than elsewhere in the Trump administration has not offered any exclusions to its tariffs out of concern that the process would undercut its effectiveness and reduce the revenue the president wants to collect. But Setser said the impact would be to make manufactured goods more expensive, which ultimately reduces demand for them."The price goes up, and people economize," he said. "There are just a series of design decisions that are going to complicate any real expansion in manufacturing."While it is likely too early to judge, there is little sign so far that tariffs are bolstering U.S. manufacturing in any significant Trump supporters have pointed to a slight uptick in industrial production this year, as well as growing capital expenditures, which suggests companies are continuing to spend on plants and a monthly survey of manufacturing executives has indicated that the factory sector was in a contraction in recent months, as it has been for much of the past three years. And the United States has shed manufacturing jobs in recent months, even as jobs in other sectors, like health care, have risen. Data released Friday showed that the United States lost 11,000 manufacturing jobs in June, a fairly significant decrease that comes on top of 6,000 job losses the previous data also shows that company spending on new factories has slumped, despite the Trump administration's frequent announcements of large investment commitments. Spending on factory construction had surged in 2024 as the Biden administration subsidized the semiconductor and clean energy industries, efforts that the Trump administration has criticized or Swonk, the chief economist at KPMG , said that the bulk of the effects of tariffs was still ahead, but that economic literature suggested they were likely to be an impediment to manufacturing."It's too soon to declare it one way or the other, but we're already seeing the headwinds mount," she Desai, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the tariffs had helped secure trade deals providing "unprecedented market access for American exports.""As the American economy continues roaring back thanks to the administration's economic agenda of deregulation and the One Big Beautiful Bill's tax cuts, American companies are set for historic growth at home and abroad," he manufacturers say tariffs are an important tool to help them compete against unfairly low-priced imports and to preserve manufacturing that could be vital for national Pipe, a 124-year-old, fifth-generation, family-owned business in North Carolina, does the kind of manufacturing that may make sense for the United States to company makes pipe, fittings and manhole covers out of cast iron and plastic, and employs around 2,000 people around the U.S. But Brad Muller, the company's vice president of marketing and government affairs, argues that foundries like Charlotte Pipe can be converted in wartime to produce anything made of melted metal, including tanks or ships. And once foundries close, "they don't really come back," he said, without an investment of hundreds of millions of said that he supported tariffs for his industry, but he acknowledged that they weren't the solution for all sectors."Tariffs are a blunt tool," he said. "But at the same time we feel like some industries need protection, so we have these industries and we can make things in America."For some critical types of manufacturing, the threat from foreign competition is not dissipating. In particular, the Chinese government continues to pour money into its factories, boosting exports and reducing the global price of goods like solar panels and critical minerals to a level where it makes little economic sense for other countries to try to recent months, Beijing has flexed its control over rare earth minerals and magnets needed by U.S. manufacturers, reinforcing for U.S. policymakers the risks of depending on a potential adversary for key Shearing, the chief economist at Capital Economics, said China's factories "are in overdrive as a structurally imbalanced economy pushes a flood of ever-cheaper goods into the global economy.""Tariffs are a blunt response, but they reflect a deeper shift: the world is increasingly unwilling to absorb the consequences of China's investment-heavy model," he some companies that import goods from China that are of little strategic importance to the United States have been bewildered by the Trump administration's sweeping approach, saying their businesses are a Harman, the CEO of Balsam Hill, which sells artificial Christmas trees and Christmas tree decorations, said his company had been stuck with tariff bills on some of its shipments ranging into the tens of millions of dollars, as U.S. tariffs on imports from China climbed this company has trimmed its workforce, frozen wages, investments and travel, and even stopped supplying office lunches. Balsam Hill sources most of its products from abroad, but buys some figurines and other products from artisans in the United States, and employs 170 people in the U.S. in sales, distribution and other activities."It means we've stopped growing our business," Harman said. "That's the reality of what we have to do to pay for the tariffs."(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)Harman said his products were not things that American workers wanted to manufacture. For example, prelighted Christmas trees, a major product for the company, have "never been made in the United States," he said."It's just super painstaking," he said. "That's why our product category exists, because people don't want to put lights on a tree."David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has highlighted the threat that Chinese competition is posing to industries like cars, robotics, semiconductors, aviation, biotechnology and solar power, said that preserving those important industries would "require a much more thoughtful set of policies than simply slapping tariffs on friends and foes alike.""I think there is a role and a place and a time for tariffs in industrial and trade policy, and I think the time is now," Autor said. "But the alternative to doing nothing isn't any random thing you can think of."
Time of India
4 hours ago
- Time of India
No passports, no study abroad: China limits public employees' travel
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads When Tina Liu was hired to teach literature in a public elementary school in southern China, her contract included the usual warnings about absenteeism and job came another line: Traveling abroad without the school's permission could get her rule was reinforced in a staff group chat. "According to regulations from higher-ups, teachers need to strengthen their disciplinary awareness," the message said. "We will currently not permit any overseas vacations."Across China, similar warnings are spreading as authorities tighten control over state employees' contacts with foreigners. Some kindergarten teachers, doctors and even government contractors and employees of state-owned enterprises have been ordered to hand in their passports. Some cities make retirees wait two years to reclaim their many cities, travel overseas by public employees, even for personal reasons, requires approval. Business trips abroad for "ordinary research, exchange and study" have been banned. And in most provinces, those who have studied abroad are now disqualified from certain public cite various reasons, including protecting national security, fighting corruption and cutting costs. But the scope of the restrictions has expanded rapidly, sweeping up employees who say they have no access to sensitive information or government funds. The New York Times spoke to seven public employees, including an elementary school music teacher, a nurse and a literature professor, who confirmed the rules are part of a push by the central authorities to impose greater so-called political discipline and ideological loyalty on government workers. Two of the people the Times spoke to said they were also ordered to disclose their personal social media accounts to their employers. Another person said she had to notify her employer if she left the city where she worked. Some local governments have banned civil servants from eating out in groups of more than three, measures that came after several reports of excessive drinking at official authorities are especially vigilant about overseas contact. The Chinese government has long been wary of the threat of espionage and what it sees as hostile foreign forces seeking to sow discontent. In July, People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece, published an article declaring that people-to-people diplomacy "exists because of the party" and should be led by the result is that even as Beijing advertises itself as eager to attract foreign businesses and tourists, it is preventing many of its own people from leaving."On the one hand, you want foreigners to come to China. You advertise Chinese culture and hope they'll boost the economy," said Liu, who is in her 20s. "But on the other hand, why are you trapping us here, rather than letting us see more of the world?"Travel restrictions for some state employees are not new. Since 2003, high-ranking officials or those handling state secrets must report foreign travel in advance. Their names are given to border officials to prevent unauthorized under Xi Jinping, China's most powerful leader in decades, the controls have extended to far lower-level officials at six fishing villages near the city of Zhoushan, in coastal Zhejiang province, were told to surrender their documents, a local government notice shows. In a city in Jiangxi province, a public health agency also told employees to report any overseas trips they'd taken since 2018.A music teacher at an elementary school in central Hebei province said that she had applied to go to Malaysia this summer because her sister would be studying abroad there. Her school principal refused the request, said the teacher, who gave only her surname, Wang, for fear of retaliation.A nurse at a hospital in Zhejiang said she would need four layers of approvals to travel abroad. The nurse, who also asked to be identified only by her surname, Zhu, for fear of retaliation, said she had not applied, even though she had long dreamed of visiting Vietnam. The restrictions, she said, seemed to show a fear that even ordinary workers might flee with sensitive information or illicit funds -- an idea she scoffed at."If there are any secrets, would people like us know about them?" she said. "What money do we have to abscond with?"Those who are allowed to travel abroad are sometimes required to pledge not to endanger national security or speak ill of China while Inner Mongolia University of Technology told employees not to accept any media interviews or to meet with any "outside parties" while abroad, without authorization. Encounters with "anti-China forces" should be reported to Chinese embassies, the university to hand in one's passport within a week of returning could lead to a five-year travel restrictions are also creeping into hiring. For new graduates hoping to join China's civil service, some of the most coveted positions are in the program known as "xuandiaosheng," which loosely translates as "selected students." Those students, who are recruited from top universities, are put on a fast track to leadership province determines which schools it will recruit from, and many, including Guangdong in the south, used to include overseas universities. This year, Guangdong listed only Chinese universities; so did five other regions in the past year. Only Shanghai now explicitly accepts graduates of foreign universities for the elite province, in the northeast, went even further. Anyone who had lived overseas for more than six months, and whose "experience and political performance abroad" were hard to investigate, was deemed ineligible this departments in major cities have imposed similar rules. In Shanghai, even having a spouse or close relative who has moved abroad can disqualify a Liu, a professor at City University of Hong Kong who studies China's civil service, said that many of the restrictions most likely did not stem from a clear central mandate. But as the central government's scrutiny of midlevel officials has grown, those midlevel officials were probably trying to avoid any possible sources of trouble."Because of U.S.-China relations, because of the competition, I think it's fair to say that Chinese society in general has become more sensitive to foreign countries," Liu said. For policymakers, that makes "everything related to foreign countries risky," he Chinese government still wants to broadcast an image of openness, and would prefer to keep its inward turn more quiet, said Wu Qiang, an independent political analyst in Beijing. Although some local governments have published their passport regulations online, many interviewees said they were told only of the restrictions appears to be uneven. Zhu said nurses at other hospitals in her city still had their passports, for government employees are not the only ones being scrutinized for overseas ties. China's state security agency has repeatedly warned ordinary citizens about the dangers of traveling overseas, or to look out for foreigners who might be Mingzhu, chair of Gree Electric, a major Chinese appliance manufacturer, said this year that she would avoid hiring people who returned from overseas, because they might be declaration drew widespread criticism from social media users who said it promoted discrimination and would harm China's global competitiveness. Even People's Daily ran an opinion piece defending overseas while ordinary Chinese might complain about restrictions on their freedoms, government employees are unlikely to put up much resistance, said Liu, in Hong the government workers the Times spoke to all said they would not quit over having their passports the nurse in Zhejiang, said her stable salary of about $27,000 a year -- much more than the average in her city -- was worth the "emotional value" she was being denied. And she knew many other workers around her were in the same situation."If everyone dies, it's OK, you know?" she said. "As long as I'm not the only one."
