Currently, advanced countries such as European countries and Japan invest lots of efforts to develop improvement of electric power production and supply, environmental countermeasure, and renewable energy development. Accordingly, Korea has been putting efforts to all kinds of electric related technical development based on the mid-long term plan. Further, it is necessary to increase effectiveness of R&D investment by propelling joint research activities with advanced countries for development of important technologies. Based on this background, this study tries to find thought-provoking suggestions of energy projects, programs and policies. For a comparative analysis, Japan which is similar to Korea in terms of market size and policies, and EU where joint research has been actively carried out among nations are analyzed and compared to policies and joint R&D activities of Korea.