Wind Industry to Provide One-Third of Japan’s Power

Japan’s wind power body has set a mid-century goal to increase capacity to 140 gigawatts from less than 5 GW now, it said on Tuesday, to meet a third of the country’s electricity demand and help it to hit its 2050 carbon neutrality target.
Offshore wind is meant to be central to Japan’s expansion of renewable energy, but progress has been delayed and a government goal of up to 45 GW of offshore wind power in 2040, looks less ambitious than the new Japan Wind Power Association targets, EVwind.es reported.
“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,” JWPA President Jin Kato said.
JWPA said Japan, the world’s fifth-biggest carbon dioxide 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.
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.