Japanese trading house giant Marubeni is teaming up with UK oil major bp to target Japan’s growing offshore wind industry.
The two have agreed to form a strategic partnership for offshore wind and potentially other decarbonisation projects, including hydrogen.
As part of their agreement, bp will join with Marubeni in their proposal for an offshore wind project off the coast in Japan purchasing a 49% stake in the proposed project.
As part of this agreement, bp said it will establish a local offshore wind development team in Tokyo.
Japan is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2050 and has set a target of deploying 10GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and 30GW to 45GW by 2040.
“Combining our international energy expertise and technical capabilities with Marubeni’s track record of wind and energy development and first-class regional relationships, we can together build important new clean energy resources for Japan and Asia,” said Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, bp’s executive vice president of gas & low carbon energy.
bp has been operating in Japan since 1960 and today it has a sizeable oil and LNG trading business and Castrol lubricants business.
In 2021, bp teamed up with NYK Line to work on developing future fuels and to support the decarbonisation of the hard-to-abate shipping sector.
bp already has a net offshore wind development pipeline of more than 5GW, with projects in the US and UK. Since 2019, it has increased its renewables development pipeline fourfold to more than 24GW and is on track to meet its 2025 target of having developed 20GW renewable capacity.
Marubeni has a total power generating capacity of about 12GW and has been involved in the development and operation of more than 2GW of onshore and offshore wind power globally.
It was one of the first developers which participated in the demonstration of the Fukushima Floating Offshore Wind Farm Project, and also participated in the offshore wind farm project at Akita Port and Noshiro Port, which is the first large-scale commercial based offshore wind project in Japan.
In addition, Marubeni together with its consortium members secured seabed leasing rights for the ScotWind project in Scotland, in January 2022, which has a maximum capacity of 2,600MW.
