Japan is turning to a small German company to generate power from timber irradiated by the 2011 Fukushima No. 1 nuclear meltdowns.
Closely held Entrade Energiesysteme AG will sell electricity from 400 of its container-size biomass-to-power machines set up in Fukushima Prefecture, said Julien Uhlig, the Duesseldorf-based company's chief executive officer. The devices will generate 20 megawatts of power by next year and function like a "biological battery" that kicks in when the sun descends on the region's solar panels, he said.
Selling green power with Entrade's mobile units could support Japanese attempts to repopulate a region that's struggled to restore a degree of normalcy after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami killed 18,000 people while also triggering the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns that displaced 160,000 others. The prefecture aims to generate 100 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2040.