TOKYO (Reuters) -Mitsubishi Corp said on Wednesday it was looking at withdrawing from three Japanese offshore wind power projects.
Mitsubishi-led consortia have three wind farms in Japan’s Chiba and Akita prefectures and the trading house said in February that it was reviewing how to proceed with the projects given a “significantly changed” business environment.
Mitsubishi logged a charge of 52.2 billion yen ($354 million) on the projects earlier this year.
“We are currently considering all options including the withdrawal from the projects,” Mitsubishi said in a statement, adding that no decision at been made.
Russia’s war on Ukraine that led to spikes in prices of equipment and fuel as well as rising interest rates were factors that forced Mitsubishi to start re-evaluating the projects, it has said.
Mitsubishi-led consortia won auctions for the projects in 2021. The farms have a projected capacity of 1.76 gigawatt (GW) and were expected to start operations in 2028-2030.
Japan is targeting future offshore wind farm capacity of 10 GW by 2030 and 45 GW by 2040.
Winners of other Japan offshore auctions include RWE, Iberdrola and BP.
($1 = 147.3300 yen)
(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya; Writing by Satoshi Sugiyama and Katya Golubkova; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Edwina Gibbs)
