Japan has no oil, no gas, and almost no coal — so it is building a global green hydrogen supply chain to power everything it cannot electrify.
Energy security is not an abstract concept in Tokyo. Japan imports over 90% of its energy needs — every barrel of oil, every cubic meter of gas, every tonne of coal arriving by ship from sources that can be disrupted by geopolitics, weather, and market shocks. The 1973 oil crisis reshaped Japanese industrial policy permanently. Fukushima reshaped it again. Now Japan is engineering a third transformation — this time toward hydrogen as the cornerstone of a diversified, import-resilient energy future.
Japan's Basic Hydrogen Strategy commits to importing and domestically producing up to 3 million tonnes of hydrogen per year by 2030 and 20 million tonnes by 2050. Supply agreements are being signed with Australia, the Middle East, Norway, and Chile. Japanese trading houses — Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo — are investing in hydrogen production projects on every continent, securing supply chains with the same methodical logic they applied to oil and LNG decades ago.
Domestically, hydrogen is being deployed in fuel cell vehicles — Toyota's Mirai leads the global market — fuel cell power systems for buildings, and industrial processes across the steel and chemical sectors. Kawasaki Heavy Industries has built the world's first liquid hydrogen carrier ship, demonstrating that hydrogen can be transported across oceans at the scale Japan needs.
Japan cannot grow energy. So it engineered a way to import it cleanly.
Source: Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 2023
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