Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto returned to the podium to deliver a detailed summary of the GX initiatives that are playing out in his city. Shaping the framework for those initiatives is Sapporo’s declared commitment to achieving zero net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. “We proclaimed that commitment,” stressed Akimoto, “in 2020, before the national government [proclaimed a comparable commitment].” Sapporo is moving faster than the national government, meanwhile, in progressing toward that goal. It is tackling the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 59% by 2030, compared with 2013. That is larger than the national government’s 46% reduction target for the same year. Akimoto described how Sapporo is reducing greenhouse gas emissions with such measures as expanding and upgrading the city’s network of heat conduits, introducing cogeneration, and adopting renewable energies.

The mayor expressed tremendous pride in the GX financial consortium Team Sapporo-Hokkaido. That consortium, established in June 2023, comprises 21 members: Hokkaido Prefecture, Sapporo City, six national and regional government agencies, seven financial institutions, Hokkaido University, two business federations, the Sapporo Securities Exchange, and Hokkaido’s two main electric and gas utilities. Team Sapporo-Hokkaido is the vanguard of sweeping initiatives for positioning Hokkaido as an important source of renewable energy and as a global financial center for GX.

Akimoto introduced eight categories of projects that Hokkaido-Sapporo is tackling: sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen, offshore wind power, storage batteries, next-generation semiconductor devices, electricity/hydrogen carriers, submarine direct current power grids, and data centers. And he introduced six priority initiatives that the consortium is undertaking as prerequisites for creating a GX financial center: a GX information platform, regional development, fund financing, special deregulatory zones, human resources development, and information outreach.

The mayor displayed a slide that showed examples of projects in three of the project categories that he introduced. “More than 40 data centers are up and running,” he reported, “in Hokkaido. Data centers require cooling, and our cold air and our snow and ice are big draws in that sector." As for offshore wind power, numerous installations are generating power off the Hokkaido coast, and the development of that power source is gaining momentum. Akimoto cited the “promotion zone” designation pending from the national government for wind power development in the waters off Matsumae. That is at Hokkado’s southwestern tip and will be the prefecture’s first nationally designated promotion zone. Also visible in the slide displayed by the mayor was the site of the foundry that Rapidus is building for advanced semiconductor devices.

Hydrogen, too, is an important project category in Hokkaido GX, as Akimoto expounded. “We are developing a showcase district in Sapporo to demonstrate hydrogen energy’s value as resilient in natural disasters and as environmentally friendly. Hydrogen is a clean energy that releases no carbon dioxide when used and that is available in times of electrical outages to provide electricity and heat.”

The City of Sapporo, Hokkaido Prefecture, and Climate Bonds Initiative issued a joint statement on December 16, 2024, the first day of the Global GX/Finance Conference Sapporo. That statement calls “for the acceleration of regional revitalization in Hokkaido and Sapporo through the promotion of green transformation (GX) in the region.” And it calls for achieving that green transformation “with government support and through collaboration to develop the GX Finance and Asset Management Special Zone in Hokkaido.”