Japan’s First Large-Scale Offshore Wind Farm Goes Online

Reports unanimously indicate that Japan holds vast potential for the development of wind energy. The island country’s coastline is expansive at nearly 30,000 km, which promises great potential for offshore wind energy. Despite the favourable conditions, Japan is trailing behind wind power leader countries like Denmark, UK and Germany. In fact, Japan is the fifth largest carbon emitter in the world.

Even though Japan operates a few demonstration offshore wind turbines, the island country’s first commercial offshore wind farm at large scale has set operations in motion only recently. The 140 MW project entails two offshore wind farms, Noshiro and Akita.

Located almost 300 miles northwest of Tokyo in the Sea of Japan in Akita Prefecture, the Noshiro offshore wind farm has come online. The commercial operations of the Akita Port offshore wind farm will begin in due course of time. The two wind farms combined have 33 fixed-bottom wind turbines from leading Danish manufacturer Vestas. The installation was executed by UK-based offshore installation firm Seajacks International. Noshiro features 20 4.2 MW wind turbines. Akita has 13 4.2 MW wind turbines.

The PPA will pave the way for electricity from the project to be supplied to Tohoku Electric Power. The agreement is for a 20-year time period, as per which, all the generation from the wind farm project will be supplied to the electric utility. The initiative will power close to 150,000 households. Presently, the said firm provides its services to 7.6 million individual as well as corporate customers in six prefectures.

The offshore wind project is owned by Akita Offshore Wind Corporation and the largest investor in it is Marubeni. Along with the Tokyo-based investor firm, there are many other Japan-based firms, both utilities and banks, that have invested into the project.

The island country has set sights on the installation of up to 10 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030. By 2040, it looks to more than quadruple this capacity to 45 GW. As of now, Japan’s share of renewables as source of electricity stands at 25%. It aspires to raise this share by up to 38% by decade-end. In a first for Japan, the island country joined hands with the member states of G7 and pledged to put an end to public financing for fossil fuel projects overseas by this year end. In a major initiative aimed at encouraging the adoption of solar energy, Japan recently announced that the installation of solar panels will be a must for new homes coming up in Tokyo post April 2025.