Japan's TEPCO to Spend $9-18B by 2035 on Offshore Wind, Hydro

TEPCO Renewable Power, a unit of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, plans to spend about 1-2 trillion yen ($9-18 billion) to develop 6-7 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind and hydroelectric power projects by 2035, its president said.

"We aim to boost our profit to 100 billion yen in 2030 from 40 billion yen now" through the investments, Seiichi Fubasami, president of TEPCO Renewable Power, told Reuters last week in an interview.

Its parent TEPCO, which has been struggling to restart nuclear power stations after the Fukushima disaster of 2011, said in 2018 that it will develop 2-3 GW of offshore wind power each at home and abroad, and 2-3 GW of hydroelectric power overseas to help renewable energy become a core power source.

"We are sticking to the goal despite the COVID-19 pandemic," Fubasami said, adding his company plans to take around a 50% stake in the projects.

TEPCO Renewable owns 9.9 GW of power generation capacity, mainly hydroelectric in Japan. The additional assets would boost its renewable energy capacity to 25% of the group's total capacity, from 20% now.

"Southeast Asia and North America are our key targets for offshore wind, while Southeast Asia is our focus for hydroelectric," he said.

Japan's offshore wind power market is expected to take off after the government brought in a law last year to encourage the development of wind farms.

TEPCO and Orsted, the world's largest offshore wind farm developer, plan to jointly bid for a 370 megawatts offshore wind project off Choshi, Chiba prefecture, near Tokyo.

"We have a good chance to win as we have accumulated massive wind data as we already operate a wind farm in the area, and Orsted has expertise in building and parts procurements for wind farms," Fubasami said.

($1 = 109.0800 yen) (Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Kim Coghill)