New Energy

Wind Power Body Plans to Provide a Third of Japan’s Electricity

Power-generating turbines are pictured at a wind farm in Vietnam. Japan is now planning to hugely crank up its wind power output in coming decades. File photo: Reuters.

Japan’s wind power body has set a long-term goal to massively increase its capacity to 140 gigawatts over the next three and a half decades.

The Japan Wind Power Association said on Monday it is now aiming meet a third of the country’s electricity demand and help it reach its 2050 carbon neutrality target

That would be a huge increase from its current output of less than 5 gigawatts currently.

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Clear goal needed: JWPA

Offshore wind is meant to be central to Japan’s expansion of renewable energy, but progress has been delayed and a government deal of up to 45 GW of offshore wind power in 2040, looks less ambitious than the new Japan Wind Power Association (JWPA) targets.

“We need to map out a clear goal to attract foreign suppliers of wind farms so that they will invest in Japan and build local supply chains here,” JWPA president Jin Kato told a news conference.

The JWPA said Japan, the world’s fifth-biggest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter, should increase its offshore wind power generation capacity to 100 GW by 2050 to help reduce emissions.

As of end-2022, Japan’s less than 5 GW of installed wind power capacity included only 0.14 GW offshore.

Bidding rules revised

The government last year had to suspend the process of selecting developers for wind farm projects for nine months while it revised bidding rules to address business criticism that they lacked clarity.

The JWPA said creating an internationally competitive wind power industry required collaboration between the public and private sectors to speed up progress.

In all, it aims to install 40 GW of onshore wind farms, 40 GW of bottom-fixed offshore wind farms and 60 GW of floating offshore, it said.

The installations would have an economic ripple effect of 6 trillion yen ($44.4 billion) per year in 2050, creating 355,000 while reducing fossil fuel procurement costs by 2.5 trillion yen per year, JWPA estimates found.

Reuters with additional editing by Jim Pollard

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Jim Pollard

Jim Pollard is an Australian journalist based in Thailand since 1999. He worked for News Ltd papers in Sydney, Perth, London and Melbourne before travelling through SE Asia in the late 90s. He was a senior editor at The Nation for 17+ years.