Although the island nation’s narrow continental shelf means its potential for shallow-water projects is limited to a maximum of 23GW, compared to 519GW of floating wind, the cost of energy of the former is expected to be four to six times cheaper — ¥50 ($0.48) per kWh against ¥200-300.

So on top of investing billions of yen in floating pilot schemes, the government is ploughing ¥4bn into two shallow-water demonstration projects that are testing different types of fixed-foundation technologies.

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