Japanese Companies To Invest GBP 14.2 Billion In UK’s Offshore Wind, Green Hydrogen
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
Japanese giants Marubeni Corporation, Sumitomo Corporation, and Sumitomo Electric Industries have committed to investing a total of GBP 14.2 billion (approximately EUR 16.3 billion) in offshore wind and green hydrogen projects, and the offshore wind supply chain in the UK
These two paragraphs add a bit of context and flesh to the deal.
Ahead of the UK Prime Minister’s business reception in Tokyo on 18 May, the UK government announced that leading Japanese businesses have committed to invest GBP 17.7 billion (approx. EUR 20.3 billion) in businesses and projects across the UK.
Of this, GBP 14.2 billion has been committed by Marubeni, Sumitomo and Sumitomo Electric for projects in offshore wind, green hydrogen and offshore wind supply chain.
SSE’s Berwick Bank Wind Farm will have a capacity of 4.1 GW and is budgeted to cost just short of £18 billion. Doing a quick calculation, indicates that £14.2 billion would only finance £3.23 GW of offshore wind.
But the Japanese say they will invest in offshore wind, green hydrogen and offshore wind supply chain. Investing in the offshore wind supply chain, would surely attract more money as the developers placed orders for foundations, floaters, electrical gubbins and support vessels.
Note.
- In Japanese Giant Sumitomo Heavy Invests In Liquid-Air Energy Storage Pioneer, I wrote about Sumitomo’s investment in English energy storage. company; Highview Power.
- Electrolyser company; iTM Power has also sold a 1.4 MW electrolyser to Sumitomo and signed an agreement over American sales with another Japanese company.
I can see other similar co-operative deals being developed. Possible areas could be cables, transformers and support vessels.
The Anonymous Widower 
Largely the only part of wind farm made in the UK is the blades at a couple of locations. The nacelles come from Europe, the towers from europe, foundations sometimes come from UK but majority is from overseas, substations generally built in middle east/asia with the electrical kit from Europe. We are making a fair bit of cable and has been some more investment here. The installation vessels are either built in China or Korea and the value add kit like the big cranes and engines come from Europe.
The politicians are right in that we lead the world in windfarms built but the percentage of UK parts is still far too small. And remember the British public are subsidising these operation and overpaying because of the daft system whereby gas basically controls the price everyone gets – so much for renewables are cheap.
The opposition parties should be making more of this.
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | May 19, 2023 |
Whilst I agree with you, about the small British content, I’ve just looked up the dates of the first nine offshore wind farms in the UK. All were built under the Blair/Brown governments. So it looks to me, that they set the policy, that has been followed by successive governments.
Comment by AnonW | May 19, 2023 |