GX 2040 Leaders Panel

On August 1, 2024, Prime Minister Kishida attended the third meeting of the GX 2040 Leaders Panel at the Prime Minister’s Office.

At the meeting, the participants exchanged views.

Following the discussions, Prime Minister Kishida said:

“Today we listened to valuable, thought-provoking views on an industrial structure to comprehensively advance green transformation (GX) and digital transformation (DX) and make it a catalyst for growth, measures to encourage startups to bear the role of creating innovation, a carbon pricing market to increase the predictability of investments, an ideal form of support for the creation of new markets and risk-taking up-front investments, and GX from the perspective of small- and medium-sized enterprises, among others. I am grateful for your cooperation.

In this Leaders Panel, people who play an active role on the frontline in cutting-edge fields both at home and abroad have noted various points from a broad perspective that goes beyond the categories of energy and global warming.

We have organized those points into seven challenges, as Minister Saito, who takes charge of GX, has just explained. It is necessary to start with providing answers to these seven issues. I ask you to present draft proposals for discussion with regard to each of the seven challenges in the next meeting of the GX Implementation Council at the end of August.

Going forward, the Government will enter a full-fledged process of compiling a GX National Strategy, the next Strategic Energy Plan, and the next Plan for Global Warming Countermeasures toward the end of the year. In doing so, we will push ahead with the process of developing these drafts into concrete policies at the same time. With particular regard to issues involving institutional responses and budget requests, we will promptly begin discussions without waiting for the conclusion of the meeting.

I request the relevant ministers to accelerate discussions under the leadership of GX Minister Saito, for example, on institutional responses and support measures to stimulate private investments in decarbonized power sources and cross-regional transmission, which require long-term and massive investments, and institutional responses for the detailed design of market systems and acceleration of procurements in order to increase the predictability of investments with an eye on the full introduction of charges on fossil fuels starting in 2028, with the aim of designing systems by the end of the year.

Let me conclude my remarks by reiterating my appreciation for your cooperation. Thank you very much.”