Japan moves to protect undersea features as it powers up its wind farms
- By keeping wind farms in local hands, Japan seeks to prevent unnamed foreign powers from obtaining sensitive topographical information
- The move could also be a protectionist measure to develop Japan’s wind sector, which last year created only 1.9 per cent of the energy consumed in the nation
According to an analyst, Tokyo may also be motivated by a desire to protect the underdeveloped domestic wind power sector, an area in which it lags a long way behind many other nations.
Japan’s trade and industry ministry, and the ministry of land and infrastructure in late June began the first public application process for an offshore wind energy project off the town of Goto, in Nagasaki Prefecture. The fine print of the application specifies that the developer must be a “domestic corporation” with its headquarters in Japan. It did not identify any countries by name in the documents.
Under the contract, the company behind successful bids will be able to erect and operate wind turbines for up to 30 years.
The Yomiuri newspaper reported, however, that foreign firms are being excluded because there are “fears that if the data on seabed topography, geology and ocean currents collected by the operators are leaked to foreign countries, they could be used for military purposes, such as submarine navigation or special forces landing operations”.
Nagasaki is home to a number of key military installations, including the US Navy’s Sasebo naval base, which provides facilities for the logistics support of forward-deployed units in the western Pacific.
