I am Yoshinori Itaya, who was the director of the "Gifu Renewable Energy System Research Center". This center was established in April 2018 in the Research Promotion and Social Cooperation Organization of Gifu University as a research center by reorganizing the Next Generation Energy Research Center that had been in existence until 2017. The mission of the center is to build the Gifu Model, which is a sustainable environmentally harmonized energy system optimized for the region based on renewable energy.

In 2015, the year of the establishment of the former Next-Generation Energy Research Center, the COP21 (21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) was agreed in Paris, France in December. The "Paris Agreement" was adopted in the latter half of this century to achieve virtually zero greenhouse gas emissions and to inhibit global average temperature from rise up to 1.5°C compared to before the Industrial Revolution. Coincidentally, the day after the opening ceremony of the present center was held (July 3, 2018), the Cabinet approved the 5th Basic Energy Plan (a basic plan on energy supply and demand in Japan referred to as the "Strategic Energy Plan"). At every milestone of our university's energy-related research center, a major energy policy was approved as domestic or international action. I feel that the fact may be any kind of connection between renewal of the center and energy trends.

Since the Paris Agreement, the ratification and entry into the issue of the Paris Agreement, as well as discussions on how to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement have been going on. However, recently the interests of countries around the world have become more significant, and the future trend has become somewhat uncertain. For Japan, indeed, it is indisputable that we will be required to achieve even stricter reduction targets under the same disadvantageous circumstances as in the case of the Kyoto Protocol. The latest Strategic Energy Plan approved by the Abe Cabinet under these trends includes the use of renewable energy as a main power source as one of the measures to ensure the realization of best energy mix to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve this, it is necessary to build a sustainable energy system based on renewable energy.

This center will build on the innovative core technologies of "creating" (energy generation/conversion), "storing" (energy carrier/storage), "transporting" (energy system integration), and "using" (new industry creation) CO₂-free energy from renewable energy sources to achieve the goals of the Gifu Prefecture Next-Generation Energy Vision. Our mission is to implement the "local production for local consumption type regional energy system in mountainous areas" (regional revitalization Gifu model), which is the first initiative in Japan, through industry-government-academia collaboration.

In order to realize such a Gifu model, we will not only break through the elemental issues of innovative core technologies for renewable energy utilization individually, but also establish energy system integration technologies that optimize the production, storage, distribution, and consumption of various renewable energies by utilizing ICT/IoT/AI. We hope that the activities of the research center contributes to the regional and promotion of the local energy industry.

We look forward to your cooperation.

Institute for Advanced Study
G-RESRC

Director Yoshinori Itaya