Takao Tsukui brings more than three decades of global industrial experience at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) to his new role as Chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America (MHIA). Over his career at MHI, he has led business development across the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East – from securing the first J-class turbine contract in the Americas to building the company’s global market leadership in advanced-class gas turbines. We sat down with him to discuss MHI's work with Carbon Measures and his perspective on what it will take to accelerate the energy transition.

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Can you tell us a little bit about MHI, how you think about sustainability, and why you joined Carbon Measures?

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was founded in 1884 and today operates as one of the world's leading industrial groups, with approximately 77,000 employees supporting critical infrastructure sectors including energy systems, smart infrastructure, industrial machinery, aerospace, and defense. In the Americas, MHI has operated since 1979, with close to 10,000 employees and 66 locations across the United States under the leadership of our Americas headquarters in Houston, Texas. 

Sustainability is not a separate function for us. It is central to how we define growth. MHI Group continues to invest in long-term emissions reduction and energy transition efforts, including technologies and infrastructure solutions that support lower-emissions operations across industry.

As we advance these efforts, we encountered a challenge shared across industry: there is still no globally consistent way to measure and verify carbon performance at the product level. Companies are measuring emissions differently, making it difficult for markets, investors, and customers to reliably identify and reward lower-carbon products and technologies.

Carbon Measures was created to help solve that challenge. It brings together major businesses from across industries and geographies to establish an investment-grade carbon accounting framework and the product-level standards that markets need to function. We joined as one of the inaugural members because we believe accurate carbon measurement is as critical to the energy transition as any individual technology.

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From MHI’s perspective as both an industrial company and a major buyer of materials, why is product-level carbon data important?

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is a large-scale buyer of industrial materials and components. The carbon footprint of what we buy is an important part of how we hold ourselves accountable in managing emissions across our supply chain. The challenge when evaluating the carbon performance of a supplier today, we are almost always working from industry-wide estimates rather than actual, verified product data. As a result, we cannot reliably distinguish a supplier who has genuinely reduced emissions from one who benefits from a favorable sector average. That distinction matters greatly because procurement decisions can only drive meaningful emissions reduction if carbon performance is measured consistently and credibly.

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Lower-carbon products are not always consistently recognized or rewarded because carbon intensity is not measured in a comparable way. Where do you see this friction showing up most clearly in industrial and energy markets today?

We see it in projects we have already built and are operating today. Our KM CDR Process^TM carbon capture technology is deployed at 18 commercial plants worldwide. At the Ravenna CCS project in Italy, which became Europe's first fully operational post-combustion carbon capture plant in 2024, our technology removes approximately 25,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually and reduces emissions at the point of capture by up to 96%. That is a verified, measurable outcome. But translating that performance into a recognized commercial value for the industrial operator running the facility is still far harder than it should be. There is no common standard by which that carbon advantage appears clearly in financing terms, procurement decisions, or regulatory credit across different markets. The same friction appears in power generation. At the Intermountain Power Project in Utah, our gas turbines will be running on a 30% hydrogen blend sourced from the Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub nearby. That fuel mix reduces carbon emissions by more than 75% compared to the coal plant this project replaced. The performance is real and quantifiable. But the power those turbines generate does not yet carry a standardized carbon intensity designation that buyers, lenders, or regulators can use consistently and comparably. In both cases, the technology is delivering. The measurement system is not keeping up. That is precisely the friction Carbon Measures is designed to eliminate, by creating product-level carbon standards that work the same way in Houston, Rome, and Tokyo.

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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has invested in new technologies, including Hydrogen and Ammonia Power Generation, CO₂ capture, utilization, and storage in heavy industry, and building green, to help deliver emissions reductions in different ways. How would regulations focus on product intensity standards being additive to MHI’s emissions reductions goals?

 Product intensity standards do not create new obligations for MHI. They validate the investments we have already made and signal to the market that those investments are worth making more of. Consider hydrogen. In June 2025, Mitsubishi Power completed a 50% hydrogen blend test at Georgia Power's Plant McDonough-Atkinson in the United States. All of our advanced-class gas turbines are already capable of 30% hydrogen co-firing, and we have a roadmap to 100% hydrogen capability by 2030. The technology is advancing on schedule. What is not yet in place is a market mechanism that allows the operator of a hydrogen-blended power plant to communicate and receive value for its lower carbon intensity in a standardized way. Intensity standards create that mechanism. The same applies to ammonia. Through the Blue Point project in Louisiana, we are producing low-carbon ammonia that travels to Japan to help decarbonize coal-fired power generation there. The carbon benefit of that pathway spans two continents and two regulatory systems. A consistent product-level accounting framework, which underpins regional product-level carbon intensity standards, is what makes that benefit legible to both markets simultaneously. Customers building these facilities want to demonstrate their emissions performance to investors, regulators, and their own customers. A product-level carbon accounting framework gives them the verified, comparable data to do exactly that.

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As MHIA continues to develop and deploy infrastructure-heavy projects, what role does high-quality, decision-useful data play in unlocking financing, building customer confidence, and accelerating commercialization? 

Capital does not flow on ambition alone. It flows when risk can be evaluated and carbon performance can be verified. The Advanced Clean Energy Storage project in Utah, which our gas turbines depend on for green hydrogen supply, secured a $504 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. That financing required demonstrating a credible, end-to-end pathway: hydrogen produced from renewables, stored at scale in underground salt caverns, and delivered to power generation in a measurable, verifiable way. As projects like this grow more complex and involve multiple jurisdictions, the same rigor is expected across every funding source. The Blue Point ammonia project draws simultaneously on U.S. federal tax credits and Japanese government co-financing. Each side of that structure applies its own accounting expectations. A universally accepted product-level carbon accounting framework would remove that friction and make multi-jurisdictional product-intensity standards and clean energy financing significantly more efficient. Customer confidence follows the same principle. When a utility, an industrial operator, or a data center developer commits to a long-term supply agreement, they need to demonstrate the carbon performance of that commitment to their own boards and investors. 

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You’ve recently stepped into the role of Chairman & CEO of MHIA and previously said that “the energy transition is something that we must collaborate on.” What is your vision for MHIA’s role in driving global emissions reductions, and what message would you like to share with other industry leaders about collaboration in the energy transition?

When we joined Carbon Measures as one of the inaugural members, we said it clearly: to truly drive collective action to the next level, we need product-level carbon intensity standards, supported by accurate carbon accounting, to reward low-carbon solutions and harness the power of markets. That is not just a policy position. It reflects what I have seen over three decades in this industry. MHI's role is not only to build and deploy technologies that reduce emissions. It is also to help shape the conditions under which those technologies can succeed at scale. That means being at the table to help develop the measurement standards, participate in the policy conversations, and support cross-sector coalitions that define how markets value carbon performance. Collaboration between industry, academia, technical experts, civil society, and policymakers is central to what Carbon Measures is trying to achieve, and it is why participation matters. Beyond our own technology portfolio, we are also actively investing in the companies developing the next generation of solutions. Through MHIA, we invested in many clean technology startup companies in America. That includes Fervo Energy, a Houston-based company that has adapted horizontal drilling technology from the oil and gas industry to unlock enhanced geothermal as a source of 24/7 carbon-free power. Those investments are part of a deliberate strategy to build the ecosystem of solutions the energy transition requires, not just the technologies we manufacture ourselves.  

Collaboration is key. The energy transition is too complex for any single company to solve alone. It requires governments setting clear policy signals, financial institutions directing capital toward verified lower-carbon solutions, industry sharing standards rather than competing on them, and innovators bringing new technologies to market at speed. 

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You have worked in multiple countries—how do you see product intensity standards supporting corporate growth for multinational companies, their suppliers, and their customers?

My career has moved across markets in ways that have given me a clear view of this problem. I started in Tokyo, spent time in East Asia overseeing power plant sales in the late 1990s, worked across Southeast Asia, then led commercial operations in Mitsubishi Power Americas from the United States before returning to Japan as President and CEO of Mitsubishi Power. Now I am back in the Americas as Chairman and CEO of MHIA. That career path has reinforced one consistent lesson: the companies and governments trying to improve their carbon performance are genuinely committed. 

Today, MHI is running a carbon capture project at a cement works in the United Kingdom, sourcing green hydrogen in Utah for California's power grid, and shipping low-carbon ammonia from Louisiana to Japan. Each of those projects navigates a different regulatory environment, a different carbon accounting framework, and a different set of investor expectations. The emissions benefit across all of them are real. The friction in communicating and pricing that benefit consistently is also real. Product intensity standards, underpinned by a globally accepted product-level carbon accounting framework, addresses this directly. They do not impose a single regulatory outcome on every jurisdiction. What they provide is a shared measurement basis, so that the same carbon performance is recognized and valued whether the transaction happens in London, Los Angeles, or Tokyo. For a multinational company, that consistency translates directly into more efficient financing, stronger customer relationships, and a supply chain where better performance is actually rewarded. For suppliers, it creates an incentive to invest in lower-carbon production rather than simply inheriting an industry average. For customers, it provides the verified data they need to meet their own commitments. That is a better market for everyone.

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What do you hope will be different in industrial markets five years from now, thanks to the work being done by Carbon Measures?

Five years from now, I hope we are living in a world where the question is no longer whether we can measure carbon accurately. That question will have been answered. The question will be: how fast can we scale? I hope the companies that have invested in cleaner production are finally being rewarded for it. That the steel, the cement, the energy that goes into building our world carries a trusted, verified carbon signature, and that the market uses it. When that happens, the incentive for every supplier in every chain to do better changes fundamentally.