Page 12 - AsiaElec Week 24 2021

AsiaElec RENEWABLES AsiaElec

Toda leads group to win Japan’s

first floating offshore wind auction

JAPAN A consortium of six companies led by Toda Cor- Utilization Law came into power in April 2019.
poration is to build a 16.8-MW floating wind The government then designated specific
project offshore Goto City, Nagasaki Prefecture, areas suitable for offshore wind projects, ena-
after winning the country’s first floating offshore bling developers to use the zones for 30 years.
wind auction. The area off Goto was one of the eleven zones
The project is to be developed by Goto City identified by the two ministries and the Port
Offshore Wind Power Generation LLC, which Authority of Japan as potentially suitable for the
is also backed by ENEOS Corporation, Osaka development of offshore wind farms.
Gas, Kansai Electric Power, INPEX, and Chubu Meanwhile, the ongoing auction for the
Electric Power. development of fixed-bottom projects in the
The consortium was the only bidder in this two areas off Akita and one off Chiba has already
auction, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and attracted much more attention. Bidding groups
Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Land, include a consortium of Ørsted, Japan Wind
Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) Development Co. (JWD), and Eurus Energy, a
said. consortium of Ørsted and TEPCO Renewable
Japan opened the auction in June 2020, offer- Power, and a consortium of JERA, Equinor and
ing the acreage off Goto City for the develop- Electric Power Development (J-Power).
ment of a small-scale floating wind farm. Across Asia, floating offshore could be the
At the time it was announced that the ten- next frontier in wind power development, said
der was capped at a feed-in tariff (FIT)of JPY36 Wood Mackenzie, with capex costs set to fall by
($0.33) per kWh. 40% to average $3mn per MW by 2025-2030.
As part of its green growth strategy for Floating offshore wind accounts for just 6%
becoming carbon neutral by 2050, the Japanese capacity of the 26 GW of new offshore capacity
government plans to award 10 GW of offshore anticipated in the current decade in Asia-Pacific
wind capacity by 2030 with 1 GW per year of excluding China.
tenders. The Japanese government estimates that
The plan calls for installing 30 to 45 GW of current capex costs of floating offshore can be
offshore wind turbines, including floating off- as high as $10mn per MW but could be commer-
shore wind turbines, by 2040 in part through the cially feasible if brought down to $4mn per MW,
development of a competitive domestic supply compared with grounded offshore capex costs
chain. of $2-3mn per MW and an average Asia-Pacific
The tender was Japan’s first offshore wind onshore wind capex cost of $1.5mn per MW by
auction since the new Renewable Sea Area 2030.™

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 24 16•June•2021