TEPCO Renewable Power, a subsidiary of Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), has entered into an agreement with the shareholders of the Scottish offshore wind developer Flotation Energy to purchase 100 per cent of Flotation Energy’s issued shares.
This represents TEPCO’s first major venture into offshore wind markets in the UK and overseas, according to press releases from TEPCO and Floatation Energy.
The Japanese company is already involved in the UK offshore wind market, but not as an offshore wind farm developer. Last year, TEPCO’s subsidiary TEPCO Power Grid, in a consortium with the UK company Equitix Limited was selected as the preferred bidder for the electricity transmission link of the Triton Knoll offshore wind farm.
In Japan, TEPCO Renewable Power teamed up with Ørsted and submitted a bid to the Japanese Government in 2021 for a 370 MW wind farm off the coast of Choshi City in Chiba Prefecture.
As for Floatation Energy, the company is behind the world’s currently largest operating floating wind farm, the Kincardine project in Scotland.
The Scotland-based developer is also already active in the Japanese offshore wind market, where it entered into an agreement with Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) last year to jointly evaluate 2 GW of offshore wind development opportunities in Japan, starting from the project in Niigata and followed by other areas.
In the UK, together with Cobra, Floatation Energy won the bidding for the 480 MW Morecambe project in The Crown Estate’s Round 4 auction and has been awarded the 100 MW White Cross floating project off the coast of Devon and Cornwall.
Flotation Energy is developing 13 further projects totalling more than 12 GW in capacity across the UK, Ireland, Taiwan, Japan and Australia.
Last year, Flotation Energy, through its partnership with Spanish company Cobra, submitted proposals for two major offshore wind farms in Ireland, and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Taiwan’s CSBC Corporation to join forces on developing floating offshore wind energy projects in Taiwan.
In Australia, Flotation Energy is working on the development of the 1.5 GW Seadragon wind project off the coast of Gippsland, Victoria.