Japanese Scientists Harness Typhoon Energy

In September 2016,  Challengery, a green tech firm in Japan, completed work on a “typhoon turbine,” which is capable of harnessing the tremendous energy of the tropical storms that hit Japan’s coasts. Typhoons used to mean nothing but disaster for Japan, which ranks number three in the world for most typhoon landings per year. However, this is no longer the case, according to Atsushi Shimizu, a Japanese engineer at Challengery, as the typhoon winds can now be utilized as a unique source of renewable energy.

According to Shimizu, “in the past, Japan has never had an ingenious approach to alternative energies,” choosing rather to buy “European-style wind turbines, not designed for typhoon zones, that have broken almost entirely.” However, Challengery’s wind turbine can not only withstand winds up to 150 miles per hour, but also convert this force into an amount of energy “equivalent to about half the world-wide electric generating capacity.” Indeed, the extent of the kinetic energy produced from just one storm could power Japan for perhaps the next fifty years. 

Members of Shimizu’s team hope that the development of this turbine will allow Japan to make steady progress away from nuclear power, and many Japanese agree. With the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster —a major nuclear meltdown that displaced over 170,000 people in 2011— still firmly held in the nation’s memory, the reopening of power plants across Japan over the past years has remained highly controversial.