Grand Strategy Design
Moonshot Targets
Foreseeing Problems
Stophe Pomeroy (S.P.): Dr. Fukushima, you are a Project Manager of a prominent thrust related to global warming, as part of the “Big Tech” endeavor, the Moonshot Program. This is a national program organized by the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation under auspices of the Cabinet Office, together with several ministries of the Japanese government. I realize that you are not at liberty to disclose certain details due to Intellectual Property and other such agreements, but could you outline your activities for us?
Professor Yasuhiro Fukushima (Y.F.): Certainly! In general, the technologies designated as the Moonshot targets hold promise and seen exerting a major impact on our society as well as for the entire planet. We can expect paradigm shifts to happen that will improve our global lot.
The “quad-C”** consortium, in addition to myself and others at Tohoku University, is comprised of researchers from an energy-business startup and from Osaka City University, organized primarily by a former colleague at our department in Sendai.
In the main, the Tohoku University-backed proposal by our team centers on utilization of CO2 in the air, through use of the Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology, although this carbon content in the air is rather marginal, percentagewise.
However, quad-C is taking the chemical materials-based approach, grounded in physical/chemical sciences rather than life sciences.
As for our forte now, the Chemical Engineering aspect... our school’s engineering program is one of only two in Japan, the other being out West run under an integral syllabus similar to us at Kyoto University... has a comprehensive educational set-up with an undergraduate/graduate tack available.
The Moonshot Program hopes to apply Japanese technology in helping balance the global carbon ledger. Ultimately, we plan on bringing forth and then disseminating widely the innovative modules that aim to lower the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere through use of gas absorbent materials.
** “quad-C” stands for Combined Carbon Capture and Conversion (quad-C) process
S.P.: You mention the current status of Chemical Engineering as a discipline in Japan; I knew the late Sir Harry Kroto quite well, whenever he visited Japan he expressed concerns about the apparent decline in Chemical Engineering education here..
Y.F.: Ah, as an lndustrial Journalist, you do find that alarming. But as you seem to be aware, the Japanese chemical industry has been faced with reduced demand from the petrochemical sector in recent decades. Along with this trend, there have been rapid changes in higher education related to Chemical Engineering.
However, there is more to applications of Chemical Engineering knowledge than as used in petrochemicals, our current research field being just one. We hope our research and development efforts honed in on our Moonshot targets will act as a catalyst in helping Japan to catch up in replenishing our human resources base.
We in Japan can scrutinize - and fortunately for us the Moonshot Program provides public money to do so - energy conservation and waste-handling measures, from food loss to plastic refuse, that must be dealt with by our human resource capacity now.
