In a short meeting with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry restated his commitment to cooperate with Japan in expanding renewable energy and offering multilateral support in the fight against climate change within the Indo-Pacific region.
Last Friday, the U.S. Department of State had announced Kerry's plan to visit Japan to attend the Group of Seven ministerial meeting on climate and the environment held during the weekend in Sapporo. After the summit — at which G7 leaders agreed to boost wind power usage, but failed to set a timeline to abandon coal — Kerry traveled to Tokyo to meet with Kishida.
Their talks centered on Kishida's push for a green transformation, which refers to a set of investments to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and reduce Japan’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, and the efforts being made by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to tackle climate change, formulated in the Inflation Reduction Act passed last August.