Four years after the first solar roadway was installed in the Netherlands, the technology is getting play in Tokyo, where it will be implemented ahead of the 2020 Olympics in a bid to show off green tech in the Japanese capital.

Solar Roadways

The U.S. company Solar Roadways recently announced its first manufacturing partnership. (Appearance of Solar Roadways panels doeos not necessarily represent those to be used in Tokyo.)

According to The Japan News, the Tokyo metropolitan government plans to install roadway surfaces consisting of solar panels coated in a tough resin that will withstand the stresses of traffic. The first pilot projects will reportedly see the solar pavement laid down on properties owned by the government.

Prior Installations

The first solar road was installed in the Dutch town of Krommenie in 2014 on a bike path; since then, solar pavement has been installed on a motorway in France in the village of Tourouvre-au-Perche.

Earlier this year, a stretch of solar road installed in China’s Jinan province, was closed days after opening when it was discovered that some of the solar panels had been stolen or damaged.

The Japan News reports that solar pavement has already been installed in one location in Japan: A 7-Eleven store parking lot in Kanagawa Prefecture, where, the newspaper reports, the solar panels have the potential to generate 9 percent of the power used by the store yearly.

An American company, Solar Roadways, has been working on perfecting its plans for glass-covered solar panels for paving highways; the company has received $1.6 million in federal grants and raised more than $2 million privately to support its technology. Earlier this year, Solar Roadways announced its first manufacturing partnership, with Ohio firm E-Mek.

Solar roadways are one of a number of novel installation methods for solar panels, serving as a way to work renewable-energy collection into everyday structures. The initial cost, though, is seen as a barrier to the technology going mainstream: One kilometer of roadway in France reportedly cost $5.2 million to build.