In early February 2025, a delegation from GETCO2 visited the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo as part of our strategic engagement initiative. The three-day workshop brought together researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ), RMIT and RCAST to explore potential avenues for collaborative research in CO2 conversion technology.

In this interview Professor Sugiyama discussed his expectations for the workshop, the immediate opportunities for collaboration in electrochemical technology, and his vision for the future of the partnership between RCAST and GETCO2.

What were your expectations for the GETCO2 & RCAST workshop and what did you hope to achieve?

– Upon my last visit and the previous encounter with UQ, I fully recognised that UQ has tremendous potential for research and implementation of the developed CO2 conversion technology itself. I was hoping that we could identify some specific items and have more practical discussions to find out which items will be a good target of joint research for the coming couple of years.

I was very happy to participate in this series of discussions because not only myself but also my colleagues in RCAST really enjoyed the conversations with the researchers from UQ. The workshop actually exceeded my expectations in terms of productivity and the outcome of identifying suitable items to be pursued. Now it’s time to think about the practical actions to kick off the real collaboration and go from our initial conversation stage to the next stage of real research collaboration.

Looking at electrochemical technology, what can you see are the immediate opportunities for collaboration, both small scale, large scale, short term and long term?

– In the short term, small scale, I am excited to see that your GETCO2 activities – especially in CO2 electrolysis for utilisation of CO2 – have a very wide aspect of overlapping with our activities in my project sponsored by the Japanese Government, and the research activities are quite parallel. In the near future, I expect that we exchange samples of catalysts or even electrodes for the CO2 reduction and test their performance.

Also, I think that future implementation of this CO2 recycling technology takes advantage of Australia’s abundant renewable electricity sources. Japan has a scarcity of renewable energy resources to power that particular technology, so there is opportunity to export the products of CO2 conversion to Japan. So, in that sense, it is not only about the initial academic and scientific exchange of in-depth research content, but also a more broad conversation about how stakeholders in industry and government in both Japan and Australia can imagine the future global supply chain of carbon utilisation.

How can RCAST contribute in this collaboration and vice versa?

– As mentioned, my research team is closely connected to GETCO2’s research areas, so there are several groups in RCAST that can be tightly associated with the activity of GETCO2, for example, the Life Cycle Assessment team in RCAST will be a good counterpart to GETCO2’s team. I also found the proposal for the use of protein for capture of methane very interesting. We have a very strong bioengineering team, so I hope those groups can also jump in and contribute to this interesting framework of collaboration between RCAST and GETCO2.

Technology solutions to reach carbon neutrality are not a simple task. Only a clever combination of multiple technologies can lead to the realisation of net zero. In that sense, since RCAST is a multi-disciplinary research institute, I hope that the multiple aspects of RCAST’s activities can be connected to GETCO2’s projects.

GETCO2 itself is also quite interdisciplinary, and the depth of the center’s research is wonderful. So, the viewpoint from the RCAST side is that we can incorporate the advanced activities in GETCO2 to strengthen our research activities in RCAST.

Thinking about the future, what do you imagine we have achieved in the partnership in two years’ and five years’ time?

– I think we will have achieved researcher mobility. I hope that several researchers from both sides are exchanged, so RCAST researchers or students are conducting research and learning from each other at UQ and vice versa. And that’s the core of our collaboration, I think.

And another five years ahead, it is my hope that we will have a joint research center for the net zero approach – from the scientific aspect to the political advocacy aspect, as well as industrial collaboration. The Australia-Japanese relationship is quite essential for net zero. So yes, we need the actual collaboration unit.