BY TETSUJI TOMITA
Japan’s push to use ammonia as a power-generation fuel is often framed as a technological challenge. In reality, it may hinge just as much on industrial coordination.
Two of the country’s most important engineering firms – IHI and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) – are developing competing approaches to ammonia-based power. Their strategies are not directly opposed, but neither are they fully aligned.
This carries some risks for a market barely out of the demonstration phase. If competition between the two fragments technology pathways, slows standardization, or divides investment, it could weaken the very transition they are meant to enable.
Ammonia has attracted attention as a carbon-free fuel that can be introduced into existing thermal power infrastructure, offering a relatively smooth pathway to decarbonization. For policymakers, this compatibility is critical: it allows Japan to cut emissions while maintaining energy security and continuing to utilize its large installed base of coal and gas-fired assets.
As such, government support has been extensive, spanning multiple programmes under SIP, NEDO, and the Green Innovation Fund, with both IHI and MHI playing central roles. Yet beneath this coordinated policy push, a more complex industrial dynamic is emerging.