TPT January 2014

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With its 50 nuclear reactors still idled, energy-deprived Japan sees potential in deepwater ‘floating windmills’ “When this 350-foot-tall windmill is switched on [in November], it will generate enough electricity to power 1,700 homes. Unremarkable, perhaps, but consider the goal of this offshore project: to generate over 1 gigawatt of electricity from 140 wind turbines by 2020. That is equivalent to the power generated by a nuclear reactor.” Datelined “Off the Coast of Fukishima”, an article by Hiroko Tabuchi in the International Herald Tribune referred to a giant floating wind turbine 12 miles out to sea from the site of multiple nuclear meltdowns in March 2011. In Ms Tabuchi’s view, the turbine project signals the start of the country’s “most ambitious bet yet on clean energy.” (“To Expand Offshore Power, Japan Builds Floating Windmills,” 24 October) She cited several factors favouring the hope of the backers that offshore windmills could be a breakthrough for an energy-poor nation. They would take advantage of Japan’s coastline, which is longer than that of the US. With an exclusive economic zone – an area up to 200 miles from its shores where Japan has first claim on any resources – that ranks it among the world’s top ten largest maritime countries, Japan has millions of square miles to give over to windmills.

Ms Tabuchi noted that the project is also a bid to seize the initiative in an industry expected to double over the next five years to a global capacity of 536 gigawatts, according to the industry trade group Global Wind Energy Council. Currently, wind turbine manufacture is dominated by European and Chinese firms. The Japanese government is paying the $226mn cost of building the first three wind turbines off Fukushima, part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to make renewable energy a pillar of his economic growth programme. After that, wrote Ms Tabuchi, a consortium of 11 companies – including Hitachi, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Shimizu and Marubeni – plan to commercialise the project. “It’s Japan’s biggest hope,” Hideo Imamura, a spokesman for Shimizu, told the Tribune during a recent trip to the turbine ahead of its test run. “It’s an all-Japan effort, almost 100 per cent Japan-made.” › What sets the project apart from other offshore wind farms around the world, consortium officials say, is that its turbines, and even the substation and electrical transformer equipment, float on giant platforms. If the technology proves workable, it would multiply the potential locations for offshore wind farms – customarily fixed into the seabed and limited to shallow waters. (See “Wind turbines in Lake Erie”, above.) As noted by Ms Tabuchi, ideal sites for offshore wind farming are scarce in Japan, which lies along a continental shelf that quickly drops off to depths that make it unfeasible to drive

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J anuary 2014