The Japan Research Institute Joins the Kikai Town Regional Decarbonization Vision Partnership

Kikai Town (Mayor: Etsuo Kumazaki) announces that the Japan Research Institute (President: Jun Uchikawa; hereafter 'JRI') has joined the 'Collaboration Agreement on Promoting Kikai Town's Regional Decarbonization Vision,' signed on July 17, 2024, with Chiyoda Corporation (President: Koji Ota), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (CEO: Akihiro Fukutome), and Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing (President: Tetsuro Imaeda). JRI, which is actively involved in multilateral research and support aiming to achieve both regional decarbonization and vitalization, has endorsed the purpose and objectives of this agreement.

1. Background Kikai Island, where Kikai Town is located, is part of the Amami Islands between Kagoshima and Okinawa, and is a rare uplifted coral reef island. It has developed its unique natural environment, culture, and history by utilizing its coral reefs as a regional resource.

However, the increasing scale and frequency of typhoons and heavy rainfall due to climate change pose a major threat to stable energy supply for Kikai Town, which is distant from the main islands of Kyushu and Amami-Oshima and lacks connection to surrounding power grids. Therefore, improving disaster resilience (supply stability and recovery capability) is an urgent issue.

Furthermore, Kikai Town faces numerous challenges, including a shortage of successors in its core agriculture industry and stagnant growth in tourism and exchange populations. Structural issues such as difficulties in ensuring the sustainability of public infrastructure due to population decline are also becoming apparent.

In the closed social system of a remote island, it is believed that autonomous regional development through the promotion of local energy and resource circulation is necessary to solve these issues comprehensively in the medium to long term.

2. Significance and Value of JRI's Participation Against this backdrop, Kikai Town, Chiyoda Corporation, SMBC, and SMFL signed a cooperation agreement in July 2024 to promote the 'Kikai Island Zero Carbon Island Initiative,' aiming to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 while preserving the island's culture, nature, and landscape. Since then, the partners have been promoting the concretization and implementation of the concept, focusing on energy, economy, and transportation.

Through this agreement, JRI will examine business schemes for establishing a public-private entity. Leveraging its rich experience in urban development, JRI will provide consistent support from the formulation of social infrastructure models to their social implementation, boosting closer collaboration between Kikai Town and the partner companies.

Going forward, the partners aim to resolve multiple challenges faced by Kikai Town simultaneously by tackling decarbonization efforts in integration with regional issue-solving, including the introduction of storage batteries and the utilization of solar power, biomass power, and blue carbon.

This agreement will generate co-benefits (effects that balance regional decarbonization and revitalization) in Kikai Town and further accelerate the construction of a 'sustainable social infrastructure model.'