The UK’s Energy Security Secretary, Grant Shapps, has expressed his country’s interest in participating in Japan’s offshore wind power development through various options such as the involvement of energy firms, financing, and insurance. In an interview with Reuters, Shapps revealed that the UK is keen on providing consultancy services to Japan, as well as sharing technical know-how.
This announcement comes after the G7 energy and climate summit held in Sapporo, Japan, where the group of nations agreed to hasten the development of renewable energy. The G7 pledged to increase their collective offshore wind capacity to 150 gigawatts by 2030 and solar capacity to more than 1 terawatt.
As one of the world’s largest offshore wind markets, the UK currently has over 10 gigawatts of installed capacity and plans to boost this figure to as much as 50 GW by the end of the decade. BP and Shell are among the companies actively expanding in this area.
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“I think the British input (in Japan) is probably both the energy companies – the physical side of it – but also the finance side of it, the finance mechanism, the insurance, the technical know-how consultancy,” Shapps stated.
Prior to the G7 summit, Shapps spent a couple of days discussing possible cooperation with Japan’s government and industry. Japan, on the other hand, has launched a second major round of public auctions to select operators for four new areas that can generate 1.8 GW of offshore wind power. The country aims to install up to 10 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and up to 45 GW by 2040.
Although Shapps did not specifically mention the offshore wind power auctions, he acknowledged that there were “very broad areas of cooperation between the UK and Japan” in offshore wind development. He also highlighted that the targets set by G7 on solar and offshore wind generation were “overall” for the group and not broken down into individual countries. Shapps believes that some countries may overachieve on the overall comparative input, mainly because of their geography and windier locations.
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The UK’s interest in Japan’s offshore wind power development is not surprising, given the country’s commitment to increasing its renewable energy capacity. The UK government has set an ambitious target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and renewable energy plays a significant role in achieving this goal. Japan’s renewable energy sector has also been growing rapidly, and the country aims to increase its renewable energy use to 24% of its total power output by 2030.
