Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) formed a joint venture to develop offshore wind in Japan, giving a further boost to the sector’s prospects in one of the world’s most promising new markets where the two said they have “high ambitions”.

The 50/50 joint venture will develop projects off Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, where the partners said “conditions are attractive” for wind at sea.

The partnership is also boost for offshore wind turbine manufacturer MHI Vestas Offshore Wind, which MHI co-owns with Danish turbine giant Vestas. CEO Philippe Kavafyan told Recharge late last year that the MHI connection should give MHI Vestas a “significant advantage” in Japan.

CIP is one of the world’s most active offshore wind investors and developers, while as one of Japan’s largest industrial groups, MHI has major domestic clout.

“This is an ideal partnership combining the expertise of the partners. MHI brings innovative technical solutions and extensive local knowledge where CIP brings global state of the art offshore wind development and investment experience to the partnership,” said Michael Hannibal, partner at CIP.

Japan has kicked-off a series of auctions at designated ‘promotion zones’ that the local wind industry hopes will see 10GW added offshore by 2030. The deployment will include both fixed-bottom and floating wind – the latter the subject of the first tender which formally opened in June.

The promise shown by the Japanese market has already drawn interest from a roll-call of global offshore wind players, including Orsted and RWE.

Major contractors have also started gearing up to handle Japanese projects, with a spate of activity in the vessel sector over recent months.

Wind

'High ambitions': CIP and Mitsubishi Heavy link for offshore wind in Japan