TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC) said on Tuesday it has selected seven candidate projects which capture carbon dioxide (CO2) and store it underground to provide support for commercialisation to enhance Japan’s decarbonisation push.
The move comes as part of Japan’s efforts to reduce emissions to meet its 2050 goal of achieving carbon neutrality to combat climate change.
Early this year, Japan’s industry ministry set a target of annual CO2 storage capacity of 6-12 million tonnes by 2030 under a long-term roadmap for carbon capture and storage (CCS).
To support the commercialization of Japan’s first CCS projects, the state-owned JOGMEC picked 7 projects, through a public bidding, as having potential to address business scale and cost reduction.
They include five domestic sites such as the Tomakomai area in northern island of Hokkaido and Tokyo metropolitan area and two overseas sites such as Malaysia and the Oceania region where CO2 emitted in Japan are transported to be stored.
The JOGMEC assumes that the projects will start operation by 2030 and store a total of about 13 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
The operators come from various industries, such as electric power generation, oil refining, trading and steel-making.
Even if renewable energy is expanded, CCS will be needed for the CO2 emissions that cannot be fully reduced in production processes such as steel-making.
CCS technology removes CO2 emissions from the atmosphere and stores them underground. Some of the captured CO2 can also potentially be used in a range of industrial applications.
(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; editing by David Evans)