No. 32: Cosmo Oil participates in the offshore wing farming business (December 24, 2011)

CosmoOil plans to operate offshore wing farming plants, each of which is made up of more than 10 windmills, offshore of the Tohoku and other districts early 2020. Cosmo’s subsidiary EcoPower has already started the feasibility study offshore of Iwate Prefecture and offshore of Ibaraki Prefecture. The company plans to build plants in waters 15-20 meters deep about several kilometers away from the coast. It will conduct research on the wind on the waters and the geography of the seabed using a special ship starting in 2012. Each of the planned plants has an output ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 kW. The construction cost is estimated to exceed 10 billion yen per plant. EcoPower is the fourth largest operator of wind power generation, and it is currently operating about 130 land wind generation facilities.

Japan has lots of suitable areas for offshore wind farming because it has the sixth largest exclusive economic zone in the world. Some predict that offshore wind farming will have a generation capacity of about 13 million kW around 2030. That is, it will have two times higher capacity than the land wind generation, and the generation capacity of 13 million kW is equivalent to the generation capacity of 13 nuclear power plants. Japan will enforce the system that requires electric power companies to buy the whole amount of electricity generated by renewable energy at a fixed price in July 2012. J-Power and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry are planning to do the substantiative experiment of offshore wind farming after 2012.