Overview of ALCA

As increases in greenhouse gas emissions have become a global issue, Japan has been addressing the issue with the policy of "developing innovative technologies against global warming and encouraging their worldwide popularization". Under this policy, we promote ALCA, through which we attempt to solve both issues of energy and greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.

At ALCA, we have traditionally adopted a bottom-up research and development approach where we encourage individual researchers to submit project proposals.However, as we operate under this system, we have come to strongly recognize the need to promote the "top-down research and development approach with predetermined target products and systems that enhance the probability of achieving a low carbon society", in addition to the "bottom-up approach encouraging researchers' freewheeling thinking".

In 2012, "Next Generation Batteries" were recommended by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology(MEXT) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry(METI) joint panel as a collaborative theme that:

1. will have a significant impact on the economy and society of our country,
2. will involve high risk and require long-term effort before practical application and commercialization, and
3. our country has an advantage and can contribute to the rest of the world.

In reaction to this recommendation, we at ALCA-SPRING have been pursuing research on next generation secondary batteries as teams, while at the same time providing our research findings to government ministries in a cross-departmental manner in order to accelerate the implementation of our findings.We have already begun to transfer our findings to the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) under METI. With regard to our intellectual property, which is an important issue in transferring our findings, our System Research and Strategy Review Team has been holding both open and closed discussions on our patent strategies.

Through these efforts, we will continue to operate our projects that will hopefully contribute to our country and ultimately to the world. We appreciate your continued support.

ALCA Program Director: Kazuhito Hashimoto