The Japanese government has adopted a draft amendment to existing legislation to allow construction of offshore wind farms beyond its territorial waters in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), as reported by Reuters on March 12. The proposed change would unleash up to 10 times as large an area for wind power projects. Japan’s territorial waters span 430,000 square kilometers, but the area of territorial waters and EEZ together reaches about 4.47 million square kilometers. Industry Minister Ken Saito said the upcoming legislation would enable the deployment of stable and large-scale projects in the sea area, speeding up the expansion of Japan’s offshore wind. While the amendment is scheduled to be passed in late June, the first wind farm in the EEZ could take around ten years to commence operation.

The new legislation paves the way for Japan’s renewable energy target to add 10 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030 and 30 to 45 GW by 2040, a huge leap from its current offshore wind power installation of less than 0.5GW. Specifically, it could lower the installation costs for the emerging floating offshore wind technology, which requires larger sites to realize the scale effect. Additionally, opening new areas of the seabed could avoid competition with other human use cases, such as defense, fisheries, and conservation. The existing offshore wind projects in Japan are mostly fixed turbines in shallow waters. The additional installation areas at deeper sea in the EEZ, where fixed turbines become uneconomic and floating wind is favored, could support a power generation capacity of several gigawatts.

Sources:

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/japan-expand-offshore-wind-development-into-exclusive-economic-zone-2024-03-12/

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/Japan-eyes-expanding-offshore-wind-beyond-territorial-waters-to-EEZ

https://guidetofloatingoffshorewind.com/fixed-versus-floating-offshore-wind/