National Budget 2021 - Green Innovation Fund Business

The Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced in December 2020 a 2 trillion yen ($19.2 billion) fund to assist ambitious green projects over the next decade as part of additional stimulus measures in response to COVID-19.

 

The NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) will set up a fund to develop technologies in key areas essential to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050:       

- Electrification and greening of electricity   

- Realisation of a "water society" (a large amount of water supply and utilisation technology for decarbonizing the heat and power fields)   

- CO2 fixation and recycling (carbon recycling that utilises CO2 as a raw material or fuel for raw materials).

  

In March 2021, the government gave the following updates:      

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has formulated the "Basic Policy for Green Innovation Fund Projects”, formulating the following:       

- A guideline for the average scale (20 billion yen or more) of conventional R&D projects   

- Exclusion of projects for which national support is sufficient in a short period of time   

- The main implementing body is those which are engaged in profitable businesses such as companies that can take in charge social implementation       

- It is necessary to include innovative and basic R&D elements that can be entrusted by the government.

 

In September 2021, METI has requested an increased budget to accelerate the country's transition to greener energy, especially hydrogen, to ¥758.6bn ($6.87bn) for the April 2022-March 2023 fiscal year, up by 11% compared with ¥686.5bn initially allocated for 2021-22.

Want to know more about this policy ? Learn more (Japanese)