Chubu Electric Power announced on Tuesday that its C-Tech division is still reviewing with its partner the feasibility of domestic off-shore wind projects and hopes to finish the assessment by the end of the summer.

Mitsubishi Corp and C-Tech were selected in 2021 to develop three offshore projects, totaling 1.76 gigawatts (GW), with an expected startup date between 2028 and 3030.

In February of this year, however, both companies announced that they were reassessing their projects because the business environment had "significantly" changed. This underscored the fact that the country was not immune from the rising costs for offshore wind projects around the world.

Mitsubishi recorded a loss of 52.4 billion yen (about 352 million dollars) from three projects during the fiscal year that ended on March 31. Chubu Electric, however, suffered a loss of 18.6 billion, due to higher construction costs, the depreciation in the yen, tight supply chain, and increasing interest rates.

Takehide Horibe said at a earnings conference that the timeline for the completion of the feasibility reassessment is still this summer.

Chubu Electric recorded an additional loss in the quarter of April-June for the three projects. This was due to personnel costs and other expenses.

When asked about the impact on industrial power demand, he said that the Chubu region - central Japan - where Toyota Motor's headquarters is located remained unchanged from the same time last year and was in line with earlier projections.

He said that "the impact has been minimal so far."

The utility's net profit for the quarter April-June fell by 14.3% to 85.3 billion Japanese yen. This was due to higher costs at its retail power unit, and lower contributions coming from JERA’s overseas and renewable energy business. JERA is owned jointly by Chubu Electric, Tokyo Electric Power and Tokyo Electric Power. ($1 = 148.6900 Japanese Yen) (Reporting and editing by Giles Elgood; Yuka Obayashi)

(source: Reuters)