In June 2019, Japan announced its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and achieve decarbonization later. In light of its unique characteristics (smaller renewable resources, large presence of heavy industry, issues with nuclear and CCS, etc.), Japan faces many challenges in long term climate change mitigation.

In this seminar Masa Sugiyama discusses the results from a collaborative project (Stanford Energy Modeling Forum 35: Japan Model Intercomparison). The project analyses Japan's climate policy proposal, considering inter-model uncertainty and conducting sensitivity analyses. The project has found that to contain the cost of mitigation, Japan needs to rely on the trade of clean energy and/or carbon.

The findings have implications for Japanese-Australian collaboration, which will be discussed in the seminar.