The Paris Agreement, which was established to prevent global warming, sets a goal of keeping the temperature rise below 1.5℃, and Japan is also working towards achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that approximately 15% of CO2 emissions need to be reduced through carbon capture and storage (CCS) to limit the Earth’s temperature increase to within 1.5 degrees. However, this calculation indicates that approximately 6,000 sites worldwide would be needed to store 1 million tons of CO2 annually. Japan is also aiming to reduce 120 to 240 million tons of CO2 by 2050 through underground CO2 storage. Therefore, the realization of CCS is an urgent challenge both in Japan and globally. To promote the widespread adoption of CCS, concerns regarding CO2 leakage and the seismic activity it may induce are raised. To prevent such occurrences and ensure safety, there is a demand for mechanisms to continuously monitor the state of CO2.
Conventional monitoring methods have typically involved the use of large seismic source equipment, with costs amounting to tens of millions of yen per monitoring survey. Therefore, conducting monitoring surveys repeatedly and capturing the behavior of stored CO2 continuously was difficult, and there was a risk of being unable to respond to sudden CO2 leaks.
PASS (Portable Active Seismic Source) developed by the Tsuji Laboratory at the University of Tokyo is ultra-compact and low-cost. It enabled the continuous installation of many PASS devices at CO2 storage sites and installation in inaccessible locations and made it possible to capture sudden movements of CO2.
PASS can be used not only for CCS but also for monitoring energy resources such as geothermal development, oil and natural gas, as well as monitoring civil engineering structures such as embankments and tunnels. The Tsuji Laboratory at the University of Tokyo is also conducting research focused on using PASS for exploration in space, such as the Moon and Mars.
WAVELET aims to implement the small seismic source device PASS in various fields and contributes to the realization of a sustainable society.
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Company Profile
| Company name | Wavelet, Inc. |
| Registered place | Nerhima-ku, Tokyo |
| Location | Sumitomo Fudosan Iidabashi Building 3F, Room 6, 2-3-21 Koraku, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 112-0004, JAPAN |
| TEL | 03-6265-1957 |
| Founded | July, 2022 |
| CEO | Akihisa Takahashi |
| Director | Shu Shimada, Takeshi Tsuji |
| Shareholders | Akihisa Takahashi, Takeshi Tsuji |
| Main business activities | Technical services for environmental monitoring using vibration measurment |
| Main banks | Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Saikyo Shinkin Bank |