Signing of energy cooperation agreement between Japan and Denmark

The government-to-government cooperation on energy is set to benefit both nations in reaching its energy and climate goals. With good wind resources and huge untapped potential along the Japanese coastline of almost 30.000 kilometres, offshore wind energy will play a significant role in Japan's future energy supply. Furthermore, through the collaboration the Danish government hopes to support the Japanese plans to exploiting the offshore wind energy potential following the Japanese Green Growth Strategy. Across Japan and Denmark, we share the vision of pursuing opportunities for further growth and regional development through not only governmental collaboration, but also close business collaboration.

“I am convinced, that through the government-to-government dialogue we will mutually inspire each other to further improve our respective regulatory frameworks for offshore wind energy, enabling affordable offshore wind energy to become a main pillar of our respective decarbonised societies”, said the Director General, Kristoffer Böttzauw, of the Danish Energy Agency. “In Denmark we have managed integrating more than 50 percent of the electricity coming from wind power and solarPV and still keeping the security of supply level at 99.996 percent over a year. Integrating large scale wind power is doable”, Böttzauw adds.

Offshore wind energy will contribute to decarbonisation and energy security

This Memorandum of Cooperation will provide the framework for close energy collaboration between Japan and Denmark. Experts from both countries will over the coming years exchange knowledge and experiences on framework conditions and regulatory practices to improve the socio-economic value of offshore wind energy in Japan as well as in Denmark.

The Japanese government has set a target to allocate 10 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and 30-45 GW by 2040. Large-scale offshore wind energy development of this size will not only provide affordable renewable energy to Japanese consumers, it will also provide an opportunity to lower the import dependency on fuels and varying fuel prices. “In the dark light of the war in Ukraine it has become clear that besides exploiting your own wind resources to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, offshore wind energy off your own coastline simply reduces energy sourcing risks. We can manage the fluctuating wind, but managing the global fuel markets during crisis like this is a completely different and difficult task”, adds Denmark’s Ambassador to Japan, Peter Taksøe-Jensen.

Japan is the 19th partnering country that Denmark cooperates with through government-to-government agreements in order to accelerate global greenhouse gas emission reductions. Through the government-to-government cooperation Denmark will share the Danish lessons learned from our development of a cost efficient regulatory framework for offshore wind energy and integration of variable renewable energy.

The agreement is signed by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy and the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities’ Danish Energy Agency.

For further information, please reach out to:

Manager, Public Diplomacy, Kaori Kobayashi, Email: [email protected],