Joint statement between Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero of the United Kingdom on renewable energy partnership
Published 18 May 2023
© Crown copyright 2023
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-japan-renewable-energy-partnership-joint-statement/joint-statement-between-ministry-of-economy-trade-and-industry-of-japan-and-department-for-energy-security-and-net-zero-of-the-united-kingdom-on-rene
In response to the current energy crisis and to climate change, we, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero of the UK share a commitment to ensuring energy security and accelerate the clean energy transition to achieve net-zero by 2050. To deliver these goals, we commit to strengthening long-term support for global and regional energy security by diversifying supply sources through the advancement of clean energy technologies particularly offshore wind and reducing our dependency on fossil fuels.
Japanese companies are major investors into UK offshore wind and other clean energy technologies and are bringing their learning – and UK partnerships – back to Japan. UK companies have developed considerable learning on development and deployment of offshore wind and other renewables, are entering the Japanese offshore wind market and have valuable experience to share with Japan. We welcome current renewable energy collaboration and encourage further progress in this field.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will further share experience and expertise, and support development of each other’s deployment-enabling policy for wider renewables including greater offshore wind deployment. To effect meaningful progress towards transition we will assess the multitude of factors that can affect renewable energy deployment.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero intend to build our renewable energy partnership as detailed below:
1. We will increase renewable energy development and deployment through enabling policy, enhancing technology innovation, and facilitating finance environment. We reaffirm the G7 collective contribution to expanding renewable energy globally and bringing down costs by strengthening capacity including through a collective increase in offshore wind capacity of 150GW by 2030 and a collective increase of solar PV to more than 1TW by 2030.
2. We welcome British and Japanese businesses working together on deployment of renewable energy including offshore wind. We encourage further business collaboration on renewable energy in Japan and the UK, and together in third countries.
3. We will ensure diverse, resilient, and sustainable critical mineral supply chains needed for clean energy technologies. We will continue to collaborate both bilaterally and multilaterally, including through sharing information, improving environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards in critical mineral supply chains, and jointly upholding free trade and the wider rules based international order, as underpinning critical minerals supply chains.
4. Recognising that perovskite solar cells are expected to contribute to strengthening the supply chain as next-generation solar cells, we will aim to grow the global market of the technology through international initiatives or international performance standardisation development.
5. We will build further offshore wind trade collaboration and share experience and expertise through the Committee on Trade and Sustainable Development of the Japan-UK Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). This collaboration will include government-government workshops to facilitate business pairing and engagement opportunities in the field of offshore wind.
6. We encourage British and Japanese researchers and research organisations to work together to develop technology, to advise on policy for deployment, and to evaluate experience. Scientists can play an important role in advising on optimal conditions for deployment and overcoming geographical and geological barriers to installation.
7. We will pursue further cooperation on clean energy innovation including policy for innovation, hydrogen, CCUS, floating offshore wind and nuclear energy as laid out in our 2019 Japan-UK Memorandum of Cooperation on Clean Energy Innovation. We will share policy experience and jointly tackle shared deployment challenges through our annual official-level Energy and Climate Dialogue between the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the new UK Department for Business and Trade and Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Ministerial Dialogue.
8. We reaffirm our commitment to promoting enhanced international cooperation in multilateral fora to meet the goals of the G7 including through Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) and the G20. We recognise the importance of platforms like the Clean Energy Ministerial and Mission Innovation in the international energy landscape to advance the clean energy transition.