Sojitz Joins One of Taiwan’s Largest Offshore Wind Power Projects

Sojitz Corporation

Outline

Sojitz, ENEOS Holdings, Inc., the Chugoku Electric Power Co., Inc., Chudenko Corporation, and Shikoku Electric Power Co., Inc. acquired a 27% stake in Yunneng Wind Power Co. Ltd. (with Sojitz taking a 9.1% share) from Taiwan’s Yunlin Holding GmbH through Starwind Offshore GmbH, a holding company jointly established by the companies, and are participating in the construction and operation of an offshore wind farm in Taiwan. Yunneng will construct a 640MW wind farm offshore of Yunlin County which is scheduled to begin operating in in FY22, and will sell power to Taiwan Power Company over a 20-year period. Sojitz will continue to pursue offshore wind power business opportunities not only in Taiwan, but also in Japan where weather conditions are similar.

Description

The Taiwan Strait, with its shallow waters and favorable wind conditions, has been attracting attention as a prime location for offshore wind power generation, and the Taiwanese government announced an ambitious plan to introduce a wind power generation capacity of 5.5 GW by 2025 and 15.5 GW by 2035. As with Japan’s solar power generation in 2011, Taiwan’s feed-in-tariff (FIT) scheme provided for favorable investment conditions, and Sojitz decided to join the 640 MW Yunlin wind farm project as our first foray into an offshore wind power generation project. In April 2019, we acquired a 9.1% stake in Yunneng Wind Power, which will be responsible for the construction and operation of the project.

At the same time that Sojitz joined the Yunlin windfarm project, the Japanese government committed to installing 10 GW of offshore wind power by 2030, and 30 to 45 GW by 2040, in line with the Suga administration’s Carbon Neutral 2050 environmental policy. In 2015, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy announced a that the forecasted amount of offshore wind power to be installed by 2030 was 820 MW, indicating the direction of decarbonization, with offshore wind power as the main source. The Japanese government has also begun to consider the introduction of a centralized management system and a review of grid operation rules to achieve the goal. The Japanese government is also accelerating its development of floating offshore wind turbines as part of its efforts to develop next-generation technologies for deployment in Asia.

With earthquakes and typhoons, Taiwan’s geographic and climatic conditions are similar to Japan, and through the Yunlin windfarm project, Sojitz has acquired know-how on everything from windfarm construction to operations. We will utilize this experience in our involvement in future offshore wind power projects in Japan.