The EU and Japan have intensified their cooperation on hydrogen with the signature of a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) to spur innovation and develop an international hydrogen market.
They will work together for sustainable and affordable production, trade, transport, storage, distribution, and use of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen.
The cooperation will help to establish a rules-based and transparent global hydrogen market without distortions to trade and investment.
Both parties have already committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and to accelerating the clean energy transition, as outlined in the EU-Japan Green Alliance.
The Memorandum identifies a set of areas in which governments, industrial players, research institutions, and local authorities in the EU and Japan will be encouraged to cooperate, such as:
–Policies, regulations, incentives, and subsidies, including at the international level to work towards common standards and certification;
–Best practices and lessons learned in renewable and low-carbon hydrogen research, development, applications, and demonstration projects;
–Project development, including in the context of multilateral cooperation initiatives, with a view to supporting other countries around the world;
–Education, upskilling, reskilling, and vocational education and training, including via exchanges.
The EU and Japan have a well-developed energy dialogue that covers topics such as energy security, offshore wind energy, liquefied natural gas (LNG), electricity market design, energy technologies, and nuclear energy.
Both sides have set the long-term ambition of being climate-neutral by 2050, and closer cooperation on methane emissions is also under discussion. At the EU-Japan Summit in May 2021, a Green Alliance was established, where hydrogen was highlighted as a key area of future cooperation.
Green hydrogen is a key focus for Japan. With the Asian country relying on overseas fossil fuels for most of its energy, developing renewable sourced hydrogen energy is important from security and carbon perspectives. As it aims to expand its green hydrogen industry to 3 million tonnes a year by 2030, the development of international supply chains is becoming an increasingly key issue.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is accelerating its cooperation efforts under the ‘HTT’ slogan (which stands for saving, generating, and storing electricity). It wants to have full use of green hydrogen ‘in all fields’ by 2050.
