Environmental Activities

Meeting venue with Ohtsubo displayed in the monitor

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Energy Ministers' Meeting was held on June 19, 2010 in Fukui City, Japan. The President of Panasonic Corporation Fumio Ohtsubo was invited to attend the meeting as one of the speakers representing the private sector and talked about Panasonic initiatives for achieving a low-carbon society.

The Energy Ministers' Meeting is aimed at bringing together energy ministers of 21 member countries and regions of APEC *.
The meeting's main theme was Low Carbon Paths to Energy Security. Chaired by Masayuki Naoshima, Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, attendees participated in three sessions on energy security, energy efficiency, and low emission power sources. In addition, a dialogue session involving people from the public and private sectors took place with the development and promotion of low-carbon energy technology as its theme.
Ohtsubo was invited to participate in the public-private dialog session together with three other representatives from companies and organizations in the U.S., Malaysia, and Singapore. He gave a presentation entitled "Panasonic Initiatives for Achieving a Low-carbon Society."
At the beginning, Ohtsubo stressed that Panasonic, with SANYO as a new group member, became a corporate group able to offer an array of products which are more widely and closely related to people’s dairy lives.
He then spoke about the company's vision looking to the 100th anniversary of its founding, that is to become the No. 1 Green Innovation Company in the Electronics Industry. He expressed his commitment to bring forth innovation both in lifestyles and business styles around the world by integrating the company's contribution to the environment and business growth toward the ultimate goal: As Panasonic business grows, the global environment will improve. He provided an overview of Panasonic's comprehensive solutions, the core of the initiatives by giving proposals related to energy creation, energy storage, and energy saving, as well as energy management, and living with virtually zero CO₂ emissions for the entire home.
He went on to mention that Panasonic will achieve its target, which is to increase a size of contribution to reducing CO₂ emissions up to 50 million tons by March 2013 through various initiatives, both in the use of our products and production activities.
Ohtsubo concluded his speech by making the suggestion to accelerate the development of a low-carbon society on a global basis: "One of the most effective measures is saving energy during the use of products. Therefore, I ask each country and region in attendance to create a scheme for attracting a broad range of investments and technical cooperation from the both public and private sectors to familiarize energy-efficient products to the public. To make this happen, I believe that we need to put into place a system for assessing and accrediting the effects of curbing CO₂ emissions."