The Japanese government has the ambition to increase the total capacity of offshore wind energy from 51.6 MW in 2021 to 10 GW by 2030 and to 30 to 45 GW by 2040. In that context, the Japanese Ministry of Economy (METI) launched a tender for an offshore windmill project off the coast of Goto, an archipelago in Nagasaki Prefecture. The project includes 8 floating wind turbines with a capacity of 2.1 MW each.

On June 11, 2021, METI announced that a consortium around the Japanese engineering company Toda Corporation has won the tender. The consortium further consists of a number of Japanese energy companies, namely ENEOS Corporation, Osaka Gas, Kansai Electric Power, INPEX Corporation, and Chubu Electric Power.

On April 24, 2022, METI certified the implementation plan of this consortium and published an overview of this plan on its website. The overview is only available on the website in Japanese. It contains a brief description of the project, a timeline for its implementation, a summary of the expected impacts on the local economy, and an overview of the consultations that the consortium is planning with the local community. The overview is only available in a Japanese version, which can be downloaded in PDF via this link.

Anyone interested in the Japanese government procurement system can participate in a webinar on this theme on May 31, 2022. Registrations are free and can be done via this link.