RITE - Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth
Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE) is an organization dedicated to the
mitigation of global warming. In 1990, Japan announced "New Earth 21", a 100-year plan to clean up our natural environment which has been degraded by human industry over the past 200 years. RITE was established as an international centre of excellence which would work toward implementing this plan.
Our objective is to contribute to the preservation of global environment and the development of world economy by the progress of industrial technologies. For this objective, under the collaboration with research institutions in the world, we are addressing R&D and the investigation concerning these fields, gathering and providing the information.
To foster the future industrial technologies for the preservation of the global environment, RITE are
carrying out fundamental research in the 4 groups of the RITE headquarters laboratory on scenario analysis for global warming mitigation, CO2 separation, capture and storage and CO2 fixation by plants and its effective use. The four RITE research groups are the Systems Analysis Group, the Chemical Research Group, the CO2 Storage Research Group, and the Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology Group.
The RITE CO2 Storage Research Group is aiming at the establishment of the technology for the safe injection and stable storage CO2 into the deep aquifer formations. RITE started a project on the development of geological storage in 2002 aiming to establish the CO2 storage capacity in Japan, to study safety assessment methodologies and develop expertise relevant to the establishment of the regulatory framework for CO2 storage,. RITE has supported the large-scale demonstration of CO2 geological storage and conducted follow-up research especially with the view of establishing safety assessment methodologies and suitable technologies for CO2 storage in Japan. RITE will contribute to WPs 1, 4 and 5 with their experience in the Nagaoka storage project.