More and more individual homes are being designed and built to help generate their own energy and use it efficiently so why not build an entire town that does that? YNN’s Terry Ettinger filed the following report.

More and more individual homes are being designed and built to help generate their own energy and use it efficiently so why not build an entire town that does that?

“Sustainable Smart Town is an initiative that’s taking a holistic approach. We have a handful around the world that we’re sponsoring. We’re taking an approach of putting into action our ability to create energy, to store energy, to save energy, and also manage energy in a very holistic way, both on a global town basis, local house basis and community,” said John Ethington, Panasonic Senior Projects Director.

Fujisawa, Japan is the site of one of several smart towns under development around the Pacific Rim.

“Some are in various stages of development and construction; but, absolutely they’re real sites, there’s real people living in them gathering good data and proving the model,” said Ethington.

The Fujisawa sustainable smart town is scheduled for completion in 2014. When finished it will include up to a 1,000 households, each will be equipped with a solar power generation system and storage battery units that will utilize sunlight and wind to generate the needed power.

The town’s design and layout will include battery stations for electric vehicles as well as open and green streets to encourage walking.

“We’ve always had a perspective of making a strong contribution to society. So, today when you see our tagline ‘eco-ideas’ and ‘engineering a better world for you,’ it’s everything around an eco-declaration. From how we run our business, the types of products we’re developing, they types of solutions we’re developing, even our TVs being among the world’s most efficient, products being Energy-Star rated, being Energy-Star partner of the year for several of our products; it’s really great stuff, always surrounding everything we do from a business perspective,” said Ethington.