5. Council Meeting GJETC, 2018
Tokio
Second Phase of the German-Japanese Cooperation Council for Energy System Transformation (GJETC)
5. Council Meeting of the GJETC on November 14 and 15, 2018 in Tokio
On 14 and 15 November 2018 the fifth council meeting of the GJETC took place in Tokyo. At the same time, it heralds the second phase of the German-Japanese Science Council's work. After two years of successful work, culminating in an 800-page study programme and a final report published in April 2018, the GJETC will continue its work in a second phase starting this autumn. Thanks to the renewed support of the German Federal Foundation for the Environment (DBU), the Federal Foreign Office and the Japanese Ministry of Economics and Industry (METI), the independently working Council will develop ideas and alternative options for a long-term and sustainable energy supply in both countries over the next two years.
In the second phase, the GJETC slightly adapted its working methods. In addition to the bi-annual meetings, working groups with council members and external experts from industry and civil society were established to enabled more focused research on specific topics ("bottleneck" issues) of energy system transformation identified in Phase 1. A particular focus was on the review of German and Japanese long-term scenarios (for 2050) and their evaluation mechanisms, as well as on the energy efficiency of buildings and heating/cooling technology. In addition, two fundamental studies on the "H2 Society" and the "Role of Digitization for Energy System Transformation" were conducted and supported by the Council.
In order to cover the various topics and at the same time maintain the core of the Council, a number of new members were admitted: Prof. Dr. Andreas Loeschel, Chair of Microeconomics at the University of Münster and member of the expert group on monitoring the German government's energy system transformation, Dr. Harry Lehmann, head of the Environmental Planning and Sustainability Strategies Division at the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Dr. Carsten Rolle, head of the Energy and Climate Policy Division at the Federation of German Industries (BDI), and Prof. Kazuhiko Takeuchi, President of the renowned Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).