Energy, health and maritime development: Tokyo partner of Horizon Europe

After negotiations that began almost a year ago, Japan is officially a partner of Horizon Europe, the European Commission’s largest research and innovation funding program with a seven-year budget of €95.5 billion. The agreement allows Japanese researchers and organizations to participate in Horizon Europe under the same conditions as EU member states and other associated countries. They will be able to join and lead international research consortia, receive European funding, and collaborate with leading research institutes to address global challenges. Furthermore, with this membership, there will be fewer administrative barriers: cooperation with Japanese partners will become more straightforward in terms of eligibility and funding. It will also be easier to build consortia between the EU and Japan. Specifically, Tokyo joins directly in Pillar II of the program, which alone accounts for over €52 billion in funds and focuses on health, climate and energy, digital, industrial development, mobility, food security, and bioeconomy themes. With a population of 123 million, Japan is the most populous associated country in the program, as well as the 23rd after New Zealand and Israel, bringing one of the most advanced research and innovation ecosystems in the world into the European scientific cooperation network.

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For Italy, this can certainly mean greater competition within consortia, but overall the opportunity for universities, CNR, IIT, clinical centers, and Italian technology hubs to involve Japanese partners with less administrative friction and greater certainty about funding. Japan is obviously very strong in robotics, advanced materials, semiconductors, precision manufacturing, batteries, mobility, and health sectors. For many Italian groups, this means raising the technical level of their proposals and taking advantage of the favorable conjuncture currently underway between the two countries. We are not only referring to the closeness between the two prime ministers Giorgia Meloni and Sanae Takaichi but also to the industrial ecosystem culminating in the sixth-generation aircraft project Gcap (a platform involving Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and recently Canada). Last June, Italy and Japan signed a memorandum of cooperation aimed at mutually protecting value chains, especially in sensitive raw materials and conductors. The goal is to extend joint activities not only within the narrow perimeters of the two countries but also to multilateral partnerships. It is under this larger umbrella that it is worth analyzing the specific focus on Horizon and the further impacts on Italy.

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The sectors that can concretely benefit from Japan’s entry are therefore the dual-use sectors and those intersecting new technologies with the maritime environment. One example is superconducting ships. Last spring in Brussels, the program presentation (within Horizon) dedicated to advanced energy storage systems for zero-emission maritime transport took place. These projects (V-ACCESS, AENEAS, NEMOSHIP, and POSEIDON) represent a European investment of over €20 million and, above all, bring together 50 research institutes, universities, and industrial entities, many of which are Italian. In V-Access, Fincantieri, Rina, and ASG Superconductors are present. To add a detail, the technologies proposed by the project develop hybrid systems combining traditional batteries with supercapacitors and superconducting SMES, which in this case use Magnesium Diboride -MgB2 technology. Asian competition is very advanced, not only in batteries but also in storage systems. A model that itself represents the cutting edge and aims to bypass problems related to “full load” peaks. From today, cutting-edge projects like superconductivity can also include Japanese partners on an equal footing. And once ready for the go to market, it goes without saying that, considering the shipping numbers, there are prospects for an innovative industrial supply chain that provides jobs for companies and new professionals in the sector. Ships – as Il Sole 24 Ore has already reported – are now so electrified that the role of the electrical officer has become necessary: a role no longer manageable by engine officers alone.

Beyond individual specifics, the extension of Horizon to the farthest point of the Indo-Pacific is a further sign of how important it is for us to also oversee the area and seize opportunities in terms of security and technological development. Geopolitical challenges in the medium and long term lead us to look in a direction that passes through the Middle East and then points directly East.

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