Insights from the clean molecule economy.

Hokuto City, in Japan's Yamanashi Prefecture, is now home to the Green Hydrogen Park Hakushu, a $122 million facility that began operating in October 2025 and is expected to produce roughly 2,200 tons of green hydrogen annually while cutting an estimated 16,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year (Singh, 2026). The project brought together Yamanashi Prefecture, Suntory Holdings, Toray Industries, Tokyo Electric Power, Kanadevia Corp., Siemens Energy, and Miura Co., a c

Between June 29 and July 1, 2026, JFE Steel Corporation ran hydrogen reduction tests at a small pilot plant with a production capacity of 15 kilograms per hour at its East Japan Works in Chiba, and came away with roughly one ton of reduced iron made using green hydrogen instead of coal, the first time that has been done anywhere in Japan (GREINS, 2026a). A single ton is a rounding error against the more than 80 million tons of crude steel Japan produces every year. Yet this i