About ALCA-Next

As countries around the world accelerate their efforts to achieve carbon neutrality, investments related to Green Transformation (GX) are expanding rapidly, and in order to realize GX, it is essential to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, as well as to strengthen industrial competitiveness, economic growth, and development. In order to achieve future greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets and create future industries, it is necessary not only to introduce existing technologies but also to create new technologies. In order to continuously create such technologies, support for R&D and human resource development in academia is required in parallel with verification and technological development in industry, and social implementation through genuine collaboration between companies and academia.

In response to the demand, the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) has launched the "Advanced Technologies for Carbon Neutrality (ALCA-Next) " (hereafter referred to as the "Program"), as one of the JST Strategic Basic Research Programs from the fiscal year 2023.

This Program aims to create game-changing technologies that will significantly shift the scientific and technological paradigm toward realizing carbon neutrality, based on unconventional ideas of individual researchers. It intends to uncover a wide range of research on important technologies that are attracting worldwide attention and are expected to develop into challenging yet innovative technology seeds, and aims to improve the level of technological maturity (TRL). For these purposes, the Program has characteristics such as "starting small," "selection and concentration through stage-gate evaluation," "acceleration after stage-gate evaluation." In the stage-gate evaluation, the continuation or discontinuation of research and development is strictly evaluated not only from the viewpoint of development in science, but also from the viewpoint of "the possibility of contributing to carbon neutrality," which is the purpose of this Program.

Management System

Governing Organization