Author(s): Masa Noguchi
Building a house consumes a large amount of energy during construction, and after occupancy. It is known that more waste materials are generated by on-site construction than by in-factory production, which reduces, or eliminates, site interruption, such as bad weather, site disturbance, theft and vandalism. Furthermore, the application of clean, renewable energy technologies, such as solar photovoltaic (PV) electric power generating systems, to residential construction contributes considerably to reducing carbon dioxide emissions during the occupancy. Thus, the combination of the industrialized construction approach, which to some extent attains the resource saving of the materials, and the state-of-art PV systems, which help reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, may have an enormous potential for meeting the growing, global demand for sustainable housing development. In spite of these potential benefits, North American housing manufacturers (as well as homebuilders) rarely apply PV systems to their housing, unlike Japanese manufacturers, who have already been successful in commercializing their ‘mass custom homes’ in which PV systems are installed as standard equipment based on their ‘cost-performance’ marketing strategy. In fact, since 1999, the housing companies have accomplished 168,628 PV installations (622.8 MW) to-date, introducing ‘zero utility expense’ PV solar homes to the market—it is expected that this PV market niche in Japan will continue to grow, even in the face of declining governmental subsidies. In response to the growing, global demand for sustainable homes, this study examines Japanese prefabricators’ means to successfully commercialize their ‘innovative’ housing and analyses their marketing strategy, which might partially help make their PV residential market self-sustainable in view of the production and consumption cycles.
Volume Editors
David Covo & Gabriel Mérigo Basurto
ISBN
0-935502-57-2