Q: Which clean energy policy should cities promote?
A: The policy suited to their own natural environment or important industries such as solar, wind, hydrogen, or fund.
Fukuoka City has focused on hydrogen as a potential source of energy, and launched the project collaborating with research institute and several companies. And it also built the world's first hydrogen station that produces hydrogen from biogas generated in the process of treating sewage sludge.
Urban Clean Energy Policy of Fukuoka City
We realize the need of accelerating decarbonization to prevent global warming. And in a country such as Japan, deeply depending on the import of natural resources, energy diversification and the broadening of procurement source are crucial in this insecure situation of the world.
Japanese government was quick to focus on hydrogen, and set up the hydrogen utilization road map in 2014, and became the first country in the world to formulate a national hydrogen strategy in 2017. Fukuoka City has focused on hydrogen as a potential source of energy since 2014 and started the Hydrogen Leader City Project.
With the collaboration of university and companies, the project has developed even to launch the world's first initiative to produce hydrogen from public household sewage and supply it to fuel cell vehicles. Fukuoka City built the world's first hydrogen station that produces hydrogen from biogas generated in the process of treating sewage sludge at the Chubu Water Treatment Center to fuel cell vehicles. It was also the first city in Japan to undertake various verification tests for trucks and motorcycles equipped with fuel cell technologies. Biogas from sewage 2,400 cubic meters will turn into the hydrogen of 3,300 cubic meters. With this hydrogen, cars can run 42,000 kilometers.
Fukuoka City has signed the partnership agreement with Toyota and plans using of fuel cell vehicles for school meal delivery trucks and the city's garbage trucks, as well as deploying Toyota’s mobile power generation and supply systems. The local production for local consumption of energy in a big city in a region, such as Fukuoka City can also be effective in cutting cost and carbon dioxide emission from the transportation.
Fukuoka City aims to build a society where hydrogen plays a major role, together with the participating stakeholders. Their initiatives are expected to the realization of carbon neutrality both in Japan and around the world.
[Case ID: Urban Policy UP-07]