Sunday, April 22, 2012

No. 46: Fund raising for the construction of mega solar power plants grows more active (April 23, 2012)

Business trend
The move to raise funds from investors for the investment in mega solar power plant is growing more active toward coming July when the special measures to stimulate the renewable energy business are enacted. Orix, one of Japan’s leading financial service companies, will create an investment fund of 30 billion yen, and it will be followed by other companies.

As the first step, Orix will create a fund of 10 billion yen by the summer of 2013 and construct 5-10 mega solar power plants. All stocks of the fund will be sold to institutional investors when these plants go into operation, and electricity generated by photovoltaic generation will be sold to the local electric power company. The investors will receive dividends of the fund that is expected to be 5%. Orix will create another two funds of the same kind by the summer of 2015. That is, the company will construct 5-10 mega solar power plants that have a combined output of 100,000 kW enough to supply electricity to 30,000 households in three years.

Tokyo Marine Asset Management will create a fund to raise investment for the construction of 10 mega solar plants across the country in alliance with Mitsui and Co. The output is scheduled to be 1,000-2,000 kW each. Toyota Tsusho and Eurus Energy in which Tokyo Electric Power invested will invest 40-50 billion yen to construct three 100,000 kW class mega solar power plants. The financing method will be the project finance that gets finance from the bank on security of the revenue from selling electricity. The two companies plan to create a fund and collect capital from institutional investors in the future.

Generation by renewable energy accounts only for 1% of total generation in Japan, but the moves to construct the mega solar power plant is expected to grow against a backdrop of the increasing sentiment of anti-nuclear power generation.   

 The large-scale mega solar power plant outside Osaka

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