€47 million in Japan NatRef subsidies confirmed

A ¥6.4 billion (€47 million) budget for NatRef subsidies in Japan has been officially confirmed by the Japan Ministry of Environment.

The amount was approved and announced last month in December.

The subsidy scheme is a five-year project, beginning in 2018 and ending in 2022.

The amount is less than the requested budgeted amount tabled for discussion in September last year.

However, the targeted sectors remain the same: food retail, food manufacturing, and cold stores.

Until the end of the 2017 financial year (which ends on 31 March 2018), natural refrigerant subsidies are only available for cold stores. When the 2018 financial year begins on 1 April, the food retail and food manufacturing sectors will also be included.

According to the Japanese Ministry of the Environment’s website: “In addition to cold stores, we will now support the introduction of energy-efficient natural refrigerant equipment at food manufacturing factories and food retail stores.”

“Because of Kigali, we decided to expand the sectors and budgeted amount for the market to accelerate the uptake of natural refrigerant technology,” said Yasuhiro Baba, director of the office of fluorocarbons control policy in the Japanese Ministry of the Environment.

“I hope that the market will use this opportunity to proceed with natural refrigerants.”

With the amount of natural refrigerant subsidies now confirmed, the opportunity for domestic and international suppliers of CO₂, NH₃ and hydrocarbon solutions has become more clear and will be another hot topic to discuss at ATMOsphere Japan on 13 February 2018.

About Japan’s natural refrigerant subsidy scheme

Since 2014, the subsidies have been a major driver of growth in the number of CO₂ stores in Japan as well as NH₃/CO₂ cold store facilities.

The stated goal of the subsidy is to encourage the “shift to natural refrigerants […] and to widely promote the use of energy-efficient equipment”.

Japan’s Ministry of the Environment says that the subsidy aims to “contribute to driving down the cost of natural refrigerant equipment to achieve cost parity with conventional f-gas equipment, and to accelerate the spread of the technology”.