Japan to increase offshore wind power capacity to 140 GW by 2050

TOKYO Japan's wind power body has set a mid-century goal to increase capacity to 140 gigawatts GW from less than 5 GW now, to meet a third of the country's electricity demand and help it reach its 2050 carbon neutrality goal.

Japan's expansion of renewable energy has been hindered by a lack of progress, with a government goal of up to 45 GW of offshore wind power in 2040 still considered less ambitious than the JWPA JWPA's goal of 90 GW of offshore wind power in 2040.

We need to map out a clear goal to attract foreign suppliers of wind farms so that they would invest in Japan and build local supply chains here, said JWPA President Jin Kato.

The JWPA said Japan, the world's fifth-biggest CO 2 emitter, should increase its offshore wind power generation capacity to 100 GW by 2050 to help reduce emissions.

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

The government had to suspended the process of selecting developers for windfarm projects for nine months last year while it revised bidding rules to address business criticism they lacked clarification.

The JWPA said establishing a globally competitive wind power industry required collaboration between the public and private sectors to speed up progress.

Its aim is to install 40 GW of onshore wind farms, 40 GW of bottom-fixed offshore wind farms and 60 GW of floating offshore.

The installations would have an economic ripple effect of 6 trillion yen $44.4 billion per year in 2050, generating 355,000 jobs, while reducing fossil fuel procurement costs by 2.5 trillion yen per year.