Since 2009, Japan has been faced with a declining population due to low birth rates and an aging society, while developing countries continue to experience population growth. As countries pursue economic development, the demand for essential resources such as water, energy, and food is escalating, increasing environmental stress and exacerbating disasters. In light of these challenges, Yutaka Ukegawa, Corporate Executive Vice President and President of Cross-Industry Business Unit at NEC, joins Soichi Noguchi, Executive Chief Fellow and Chief Technology Officer at the International Institute for Socio-Economic Studies (IISE), the NEC Group’s think tank, to discuss how NEC's technology and expertise are driving the global green transformation. They share insights into the initiatives and goals behind these efforts.

In recent years, global warming has accelerated, and as multiple environmental indicators exceed the safe range of the planetary boundaries, companies are being strongly urged to take environmentally friendly actions towards sustainable coexistence with the Earth. NEC has positioned the environment as an important theme in its “NEC 2030 VISION,” and is strengthening its efforts in both reducing its own environmental impact and contributing to the creation of a sustainable environment through its products and services. We are focusing our efforts on the Client Zero initiative, which involves leveraging the latest technologies for practical use within our own company and then using the knowledge gained from this to create solutions. These solutions will then be employed in NEC BluStellar.

Predicting the impacts of climate change is inherently uncertain, and the long timeframes required to realize the benefits of adaptation measures often lead to insufficient funding. In response, adaptation finance is emerging as a critical approach to providing quantitative evaluations of physical and financial risks to inform and encourage investments. However, accurate and ongoing assessment of climate risks and adaptation outcomes as well as the calculation of investment returns require significant policy and regulatory frameworks and also advances in technology and expertise. This paper presents NEC’s digital adaptation finance initiatives that leverage digital technologies to collect and generate necessary data for risk assessment and contribute to the real-world implementation of adaptation finance.

Since fiscal year 2023, NEC has been actively promoting the integration of digital technologies to strengthen adaptation finance at the Conference of the Parties (COP) organized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Adaptation finance aims to increase financial flows for climate adaptation initiatives, a sector that often receives less attention compared to climate mitigation efforts. COP29, held in November 2024, was called the "Finance COP," and while the main topic was the financing targets for climate change, NEC continued its efforts from the previous COP28 to disseminate information on NEC's initiatives for social implementation of adaptation finance and convey images of how our digital technology can be utilized, receiving strong support. This paper introduces the content and results of NEC's information dissemination efforts at COP29.

As global efforts toward carbon neutrality continue to reshape market dynamics, businesses must formulate strategic responses aligned with green transformation (GX). The NEC Group as a whole has established a one-stop system to provide support for solving organizational issues associated with corporate GX, from supporting the visualization of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the corporate and product levels through the provision of the GX Platform, to supporting the formulation of GX strategies through GX Consulting, and further, to supporting the implementation of specific GHG emission reduction measures through GHG Reduction Solutions. This paper provides an in-depth look at the unique features of the GX Consulting service provided by the NEC Group.

Decarbonization and resource circulation are critical components for today's businesses in driving green transformation (GX). Companies need to effectively reduce CO₂emissions while optimizing resources to meet environmental standards. A failure to advance in these areas can result in regulatory penalties, reduced competitiveness, and diminished investor confidence. NEC's GX Platform offers support by integrating and managing environmental data, such as CO₂ emissions, to propose optimal strategies that promote sustainable business growth.

About one-third of Japan's CO₂ emissions originate from the industrial sector, primarily from manufacturing. To fulfill their social responsibility, Japanese manufacturers must continually work to reduce these emissions. Managing product-specific CO₂ emissions accurately can be achieved through the Carbon Footprint of Product (CFP) assessments, which track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across each stage of a product's lifecycle, similar to the principles of activity-based costing (ABC). NEC refers to this approach as activity-based GHG emission (ABG) management. This paper introduces the regulations surrounding CFP disclosure, presents an ideal management approach using ABG for continuous improvement, identifies the anticipated challenges, and outlines how NEC plans to offer value in addressing these areas.

NEC Platforms is actively working to reduce CO₂ emissions (Scope 1 and 2) at its production bases by setting targets aligned with the NEC Group and implementing initiatives to achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions through the use of renewable energy and other activities. As part of this commitment, we are promoting the use of “green power” generated by solar power systems, in line with our mid-term strategy. In addition, in response to customer requests to minimize CO₂ emissions in manufacturing, our Fukushima Plant transitioned to using 100% renewable energy as of June 2024. This paper details the initiatives undertaken at our production to expand the use of solar power generation.

NEC and NEC Fielding have harnessed quantum-inspired technology to optimize the delivery planning of maintenance parts, rolling it out as a fully operational system in October 2022. At the Tokyo Parts Center of NEC Fielding, which supplies maintenance parts throughout Tokyo's 23 wards, this technology has transformed what was once a manual daily delivery planning process. The automation has increased operational efficiency, reduced costs, and helped lower greenhouse gas emissions. This initiative showcases how quantum-inspired technology can support green transformation.

NEC is currently developing “CropScope”, an agricultural digital transformation (DX) solution for open-field farming. With CropScope, growers can remotely monitor field conditions in real time using data collected from satellites and various sensors. Additionally, CropScope can automatically determine the optimal amounts and schedules for water and fertilizer application based on the collected data, facilitating seamless execution of these actions. In field trials conducted in processing tomato fields across Europe, CropScope successfully reduced water usage by 15% and fertilizer usage by 20%, while simultaneously increasing yields by 20%. This paper introduces the features of CropScope that make these achievements possible and discusses its potential role in minimizing environmental impact.

Data centers are the backbone of the IT society. Leveraging years of operational experience, NEC opened the NEC Kanagawa Data Center Phase 2 and NEC Kobe Data Center Phase 3 Buildings in May 2024. This paper focuses on the environmental requirements surrounding data centers and the various initiatives for greening them. Both centers strive for energy efficiency and achieved a design partial Power Usage Effectiveness (pPUE) at the top level of 1.16, which is a primary metric for measuring data center energy efficiency. With rising expectations for AI, this paper also considers the technological trends related to the hosting of GPU servers and other AI-supporting infrastructure, and also presents NEC's vision for the future of data centers.

In order to achieve a sustainable society, efforts to create a circular economy are expanding. In Europe, a digital product passport (DPP) is being introduced to this end. Similar initiatives are underway in Japan, and NEC is participating in the Cabinet Office's Strategic Innovation Creation Program to promote the construction of a plastic information distribution platform, commonly known as PLA-NETJ. PLA-NETJ will provide an information distribution platform with enhanced data reliability by utilizing NEC's trust technology. In the future, the scope of the project will be expanded from plastics to various products and materials, and the goal is to achieve a circular economy by supporting the supply chain through information distribution.

This paper presents the application of materials informatics (MI) technology in the field of plastic recycling. In the field of plastic recycling, which is becoming increasingly important as we work toward the realization of a sustainable society, NEC has proposed a system for improving the efficiency of the plastic recycling process using MI technology and has confirmed the effectiveness of this system with a plastic recycler. We aim to bring about innovation in the field of plastic recycling.

As international efforts to build a sustainable society gain momentum, the aluminum industry is actively pursuing initiatives to enhance quality, preserve essential material properties, and explore advanced recycling methods to achieve decarbonization. Realizing a circular economy requires close collaboration among industry stakeholders to create optimized supply and value chains. To support this transition, NEC is leveraging ICT solutions to improve coordination among these participants and drive the development of new industrial systems that maximize the overall value within a circular economy.

In response to the increasing frequency of natural disasters caused by climate change, NEC is developing an advanced analysis system that integrates satellite imagery with Large Language Model (LLM) technology. This system enables non-specialist users to intuitively assess disaster situations through chat-based interactions, facilitating rapid first response. A key feature of the system is its ability to rapidly generate responses by combining multiple AI models that perform highly accurate damage assessments and extract quantitative information. Looking ahead, NEC plans to expand the system’s capabilities to support climate change adaptation and enhance the development of disaster risk visualization through data-driven insights.

In today’s world, with its complex global supply chains, the difficulties and un-certainties we face offer both challenges and opportunities for making things better, especially in terms of efficiency and sustainability.
These challenges are exacerbated by unpredictable events, including natural disasters, unexpected incidents, and unusual business practices. The increasing frequency and severity of climate-related events highlight the need for more ad-vanced modeling methods. By focusing on reducing risks and enhancing sustain-ability, these models can play a crucial role in mitigating the impacts of climate change and supporting carbon emission reduction efforts.
In this paper, we present a new agent-based simulation approach that goes be-yond the usual limits of supply chain simulations by incorporating sustainability directly into supply chain operations using Reinforcement Learning (RL) algo-rithms. We will introduce a new agent-based simulation technology; a sustain-able supply chain simulation system that takes carbon emissions into account in its main operations. This new agent-based simulation technology is the core of the analytical simulation in a comprehensive suite offering support for GX, which is currently under planning. Additionally, we examine how effective a multi-agent RL strategy is in dealing with the complex and uncertain nature of supply chains that span multiple levels. By comparing this strategy with tradi-tional heuristic methods, our study looks at how well single versus multiple RL agents can manage risks and improve sustainability in both the beginning and end parts of the supply chain. The results of our experiments show that strate-gies based on RL are much better than traditional methods at managing risks, making profits, and achieving sustainability goals.

Offshore wind power generation is one vital measure helping us work toward achieving carbon neutrality, and the submarine power transmission cables that carry electricity ashore from offshore turbines are an essential aspect. Therefore, constant monitoring of the cables is required to mitigate potential damage through early detection. NEC is engaged in monitoring the state of submarine power transmission cables using optical fiber sensing technology that leverages optical fiber cable already integrated within submarine cables. Leveraging the strengths of optical fiber sensing technology, including long-range sensing capabilities, high spatial resolution, and strong environmental robustness, we enable cost-effective continuous monitoring. This initiative aims to address the challenges associated with proliferating offshore wind power generation and contribute to the realization of carbon neutrality by 2050.

As we aim for carbon neutrality by 2050, the adoption of offshore wind power as a renewable energy source is rapidly expanding. The electricity generated by offshore wind turbines needs to be transmitted to land through power cables. However, due to the importance of wind and other environmental factors in selecting turbine locations, addressing obstacles like existing structures and coastal fisheries, especially at cable landfall points, has become a key challenge. The Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) method is gaining attention as a means to overcome these obstacles. This technique allows for cable installation without demolishing existing coastal structures or disturbing the seabed, thus addressing environmental concerns. In this paper, we introduce the HDD method, a trenchless technology that minimizes environmental impact while enabling the effective installation of offshore wind power cables.

Green Transformation (GX) is a transformation of economic and social systems towards a decarbonized society, fostering innovation and new investment. Digital Transformation (DX) serves as an essential partner in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of GX, and the combined evolution of GX and DX is expected to become the dominant trend in future business practices. Information and communication technology (ICT) supports data analysis and efficiency improvements in areas such as climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, the circular economy, and nature positive initiatives. ICT technologies that contribute to solving environmental challenges include AI, digital twins, remote sensing, IoT, robotics, and blockchain. The application of ICT in GX is expected to promote efficiency, accuracy, monitoring and forecasting, optimization, automation, and information sharing.