Japan Goto Island floater in the frame for first Japanese offshore wind auction

Japan’s first auction for offshore wind may take place as soon as September, but will be a floating wind project, not a bottom-fixed windfarm

Representatives of a law firm closely involved with the process and with the offshore wind industry in Japan as a whole said the Goto Island floating wind project, a small, 21-MW project, will probably now be the first project for which an auction takes place in Japan, but others will quickly follow.

Baker McKenzie co-head of its projects group and renewable and clean energy group Ean Mac Pherson and Naoki ‘Nick’ Eguchi, head of the firm’s banking and finance practice group, said that although the small-scale project is not representative of the type of project that will form the bulk of the first round of offshore wind projects in Japan – which will be bottom-fixed – the Goto Island project in the far south of the country is likely to be the subject of Japan’s first auction because it is in Japan’s first designated promotion zone in ‘general waters.’

In addition to Goto Island, another 10 promotion zones have been proposed, mostly but not exclusively on the country’s east coast.

Akita, Noshiro Mitane and Oga, and Akira Yurihonjo on the west coast and Chosi/Chiba on the east coast are regarded as the most promising and most likely to secure designated promotion zone status in the near-term, enabling auctions to take place.

Mr Eguchi said it is the ambition of the Japanese Government to auction 1 GW of offshore wind capacity a year from 2020 onwards, which translates into an ambitious target of 10 GW of projects auctioned by 2030.