Organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics unveiled a plan to use hydrogen as the fuel for its Olympic flame cauldron at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee general session on Friday.
It would be the first time the next-generation fuel has been used for this purpose, and organizers are considering using fuel produced at a factory in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture. That town was evacuated after the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suffered multiple meltdowns in March 2011.
The plan is in sync with Tokyo 2020 being branded as "the Reconstruction Olympics" in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami that devastated much of Tohoku.
In a similar nod to the use of clean energy, roughly 90 percent of the 3,700 vehicles provided for official use during the games by Olympic partner Toyota will be electric, with about 500 using hydrogen fuel cells.