On October 26, 2020, Japan’s Prime Minister Suga (at that time) declared in his policy speech to the Diet, “We aim to achieve a carbon neutral, decarbonized society by 2050”. This declaration was also extended to the Japan Business Federation. Now, a year and a half after October 2020, I checked the published gazettes to verify whether the number of patent applications related to carbon neutrality surged along with this declaration.
I searched the Patent Information Platform (J-PlatPat) for the number of gazettes containing the term “carbon neutral” in the specification by year of application, and found the following results (as of May 31, 2022).
Already in 2001, there were applications with the term “carbon neutral” in the specification. For example, in Japanese Patent Publication 2003-129058, it is stated that “Biomass, in particular, is carbon neutral and should be actively used to replace petroleum, coal, etc., in order to fulfill the international commitments made at the Kyoto Conference on Climate Change Prevention (COP3).” This seems to reflect the growing interest in global warming and climate change triggered by the Kyoto Protocol of December 1997.
Subsequently, the number of applications describing the term “carbon neutral” increased, but peaked in 2009 (the year COP15 was held in Copenhagen) and has been declining since then, with a leveling off trend since around 2015. Incidentally, the Paris Agreement, which sets reduction targets for each member country, was adopted at COP21 in 2015. As of the end of October to the first half of November 2020, when Prime Minister Suga’s declaration was made as introduced at the beginning of this report, there was no particular upward trend in applications.
I hope that many carbon neutral related inventions will be created for the future global environment. (Conan)