The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and the Japan Wind Power Association (JWPA) have announced that they have formed a joint Japan Offshore Wind Task Force to drive offshore wind growth in Japan. As of December 2019, Japan has 65.6MW of offshore wind capacity, including five floating turbines totalling 19MW. However, the full scale of Japan’s offshore wind potential has yet to be unlocked due to regulatory and industrial bottlenecks, both of which this Task Force aims to address.
The Japan Offshore Wind Task Force includes both local and global industry players and will engage regularly with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) to share best practices, conduct studies and bring together all the most relevant stakeholders in order to build a thriving offshore wind market in Japan. The Task Force will be chaired by Jin Kato, President at JWPA, and Alastair Dutton, Chair of GWEC’s Global Offshore Wind Task Force. The first deliverable of the Task Force will be a cost reduction study to explore the long-term cost reduction potential of the industry in Japan. The study will be released in October 2020 at the Global Offshore Wind Summit – Japan, organised jointly by GWEC and JWPA.