Increasing attention has been recently focused on sustainability assessment of products and technologies from environmental, social and economical aspects. However, few studies on social and psychological impacts of energy technologies have been made so far. This paper addresses social and psychological impacts of PV systems installed in junior high schools. Statistical analyses, based mainly on questionnaire surveys, indicated that students of schools with PV systems tend to increase their environmentally conscious behavior, compared to students of schools without PV systems. Moreover, it is found that environmentally sound behavior of students of schools with PV systems is induced by two factors: communication among students about energy and environmental problems and the awareness of being a student of an Eco-School. The analyses suggest that the existence of PV systems in schools may make students feel that their school is an Eco-School.

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In GHG emission reduction plans in Japan, photovoltaic is promoted aggressively. However, government of Japan and local governments have no concrete promotion for solar water heater since the statistics of solar water heater such as number of installed houses and effective energy supply are not well maintained. The objective of this study is to investigate the installation of photovoltaic and solar water heater in a city of Sagamihara City in Kanagawa Prefecture in order to support the regional action plan for solar energy. For that purpose we conducted a field study by visual observation and obtained the following results. The installation ratios of photovoltaic and solar water heater vary depending on the regional characters in Sagamihara City. The ratios of photovoltaic tend to be high in the liver and town region and those of solar water heater are high in the rural region in the city. Despite of the current decrease of solar water heater, the rural region still use more solar energy including photovoltaic and solar water heater than the other regions. The numbers of installation of solar water heater vary substantially with references, but the number of Bureau of Statistics of Japan is close to that of this field study in Sagamihara City. Hence, the statistics of Bureau of Statistics could be basic data that local governments utilize in order to institute the regional action plans for the solar energy.

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For the new process of effective utilization of energy, the process of recovery of exhaust heat energy with steam reforming of dimethyle ether (DME) proposed. Steam reforming of DME is an endothermic reaction as; DME + 3H₂O+122[KJ/mol] → 6H₂O +2CO₂-122.5KJ/mol.So,if the exhaust heat energy would be used for the reforming reaction, the exhaust heat energy could be recovered as hydrogen, fuels of high quality. In this study, Fundamental experiment for steam reforming of DME has been done with fixed bed reactor, changing experimental condition; W/F, temperature, H₂O partial pressure and DME partial pressure. Reaction rate equation was formulated with experimental results. DME conversion with the obtained equation and DME conversion with experiment was average error with 0.04[-]. Next, Quantity of catalyst for reactor was compared with device scale of exhaust heat source; gas engine with reaction rate equation obtained. Quantity of catalyst was fully smaller by comparing to device scale of exhaust heat source.

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We compared the generation costs of photovoltaic (PV) with thermal and nuclear power during the period of the recent price surge of fossil fuels and raw materials by a bottom up analysis using a Japanese life cycle assessment (LCA) data for power plants.
Although the steep rise of fossil fuel price had spurred the political mood in favor for renewable energy, we found that the impacts on the cost of PV systems by the price rise were not necessarily small compared to those on the costs of thermal or nuclear power. Due to the price hike of materials from 2003 to 2008, the cost of a PV system had increased by 2.7 yen per kWh. It is close to the price increase of coal power by 3.5 yen per kWh in the same period due to fuel and material price hike. Moreover, the impacts on the cost of a nuclear power were as small as 0.4 yen per kWh in the same period, in spite of the steep rise of uranium price. We conclude that a surge of resource and energy price does not necessarily make PV more cost competitive against nuclear and fossil fuel power, since PV is more material intensive than nuclear and fossil fuel power and the material price also surges when the fuel price does.

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