Japan and Google add their puff to offshore wind

By Bloomberg New Energy Finance on 23 January 2013

German grid operator TenneT breathed a sigh of relief last week, announcing that Mitsubishi Corporation, Japan’s largest trading house by market value, would invest EUR 576m (USD 769m) to help connect sea-based wind farms to the power grid. The operator is under pressure to catch up with deferred grid connections in the German North Sea and seeks to prevent additional delays. Utilities including RWE and E.ON threatened to halt investment there because of interruptions.Offshore wind was the centre of attention in the clean energy sector last week, with an investment by a Japanese corporation in the North Sea, plans for a giant project in Japan’s own waters, and the participation of Google in a US interconnection venture.

Mitsubishi will pay EUR 240m for a 49% stake in the BorWin1 and BorWin2 grid connection projects, and EUR 336m for a 49% stake in HelWin2 and DolWin2, TenneT said 16 January in a statement. Total investment in all four projects will be EUR 2.9bn (USD 3.9bn), with an equity share of about 40%, TenneT said.

Germany wants to add 25GW of sea-based wind turbines by 2030. Europe’s biggest economy is investing in clean energy as it phases out nuclear power. It decided to close all of its atomic power facilities by 2022 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan nearly two years ago.

Japan shut down its 54 nuclear reactors after a tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Daiichi plant in March 2011. Only two reactors have come back online since.

The loss of nuclear capacity has created an opening for more renewable sources in Japan. Indeed, the New Scientist reported last week that Japan is preparing to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm, starting this July. The plan, as the magazine reported, would see 143 wind turbines built on platforms 16km off the coast of – out of all places – Fukushima by 2020. The farm would generate 1GW of power once completed. No information has yet emerged on financing of the project – an omission that puts a question mark over its supposed schedule.