EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation Minerva Policy Seminar
Challenges Confronting the Hydrogen Strategies of the EU and Japan and Efforts to Strengthen the Japan–EU Partnership

Tuesday 7 July 2026, 16:00–17:30 Tokyo (9:00–10:30 Brussels)
（With simultaneous interpretation, free event, Zoom webinar）

Hydrogen is an important energy source for advancing the energy transition and green transformation. For this reason, both Japan and the EU have formulated hydrogen strategies and are working toward its implementation.

In particular, so-called “green hydrogen” (hydrogen produced through the electrolysis of water using clean energy) remains costly, and therefore both Japan and the EU have introduced subsidy schemes to bridge the cost gap. Also, in recent years, global inflation has driven up plant construction costs, and there have been cases in which planned projects have been canceled or delayed due to the inability to secure commitments from off-takers. The webinar will also report on the results from a recent study commissioned by the EU-Japan Centre about the potential for Japan and the EU to co-develop or align certain parts of their hydrogen supply chains, ensuring their access to critical technologies, markets, and infrastructure.

Against this backdrop of challenges, this webinar will bring together public- and private-sector stakeholders to discuss how the hydrogen industry systems that are economically and environmentally important to Japan and the EU can achieve competitiveness and sustainable growth, as well as how useful and promising cooperation and collaboration between Japan and the EU can be in achieving these goals. For registration, please click the link below.

Program

16:00-16:02 (9:00-9:02) Opening remarks　
-    Manuel Hubert, EU-side Managing Director, EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation

16:02-17:00 (9:02 -10:00) Presentations
-    Daisuke Hirota, Director of Hydrogen and Ammonia Division, Agency for Natural Resources and Energy
-    TBD, COM official (DG ENER), European Commission
-    Yu Kashiwagi, General Manager, JH2A (tentative)

-    Ander Martinez Alonso, Senior Researcher, EVERGi Research Group and Flanders (co-author of EU-Japan Centre Minerva policy report Mapping of EU and Japan’s respective strengths in the hydrogen value chain)

17:00-17:30 (10:00-10:30) Panel discussion/Q&A session
Moderator: Yasuo Tanabe, Japan-side Managing Director, EU–Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation

• Registration: This webinar will be held on ZOOM. Please click here for registration.
• Questions: Registrants can enter questions in the Questions & Comments section of the registration page.
• It could be difficult to answer all questions due to time constraints. Thank you for understanding.