BayWa r.e. has announced the successful sale of its 11.9 MW solar park in Izumi.
The 24-hectare site in the Kyushu Kagoshima Prefecture was completed and achieved full operations in April 2020 and has now been sold to D&D Solar GK, a new venture set up between Osaka Gas and the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ).
Through the joint venture, the two companies will now share 50/50 ownership of the solar farm, with the electricity – enough for 5,000 homes – being sold direct to the grid.
“The sale of our Izumi solar farm is great to see and more importantly will help us to further invest in solar developments in Japan. After establishing the team and our operations in the market, the completion of this project and continued development of our pipeline, really underpins our commitment to the country,” said Tetsuya Oura, President, BayWa r.e Japan K.K.
“We are now looking forward to building on our new relationship with Osaka Gas and DBJ and working with them to increase renewable energy in Japan.”
The Izumi project is only the start of BayWa r.e. Japan’s investment in solar energy in the country. With further projects in development, a 35 MW project due for completion in 2021 and another in Kobe due to commence construction next year. BayWa r.e. already has close to 100 MW of green energy in its pipeline.
The sale of the solar farm to joint venture, D&D Solar GK is a great fit for all the partners. Part of the Daigas Group, Osaka Gas has defined renewable energy as an important energy source going forward.
The company intends to develop and acquire renewable energy power sources of over 1,000 MW both domestically and globally by 2030. With the acquisition of this solar power plant, it says it will develop and operate 710 MW of renewable energy power source (including projects under-construction and post FID).
Likewise, DBJ actively supports actions contributing to the achievement of decarbonised society through the provision of risk money to domestic and international renewable energy power sources such as solar and wind.
Koichiro Age, Head of Renewable Energy Development DEPT., Osaka Gas/Yasuhiro Matsui, General Manager of DBJ commented: “D&D has been set up to enable the purchase of solar farms here in Japan, and our purchase of the BayWa r.e. site at Izumi marks our first successful transaction.
“We look forward to making further purchases of this nature, and to continuing to work with BayWa r.e. and to push forward the global renewable energy transition.”
Japan is a very important market in the APAC region for BayWa r.e., along with other countries such as Australia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan.
“Japan has recently committed to achieving carbon neutral status by 2050, and we are pleased that our own activity in the country will help them towards this goal,” added Daniel Gaefke, APAC Director of Projects , BayWa r.e. “We see great potential for the just started post Feed-in-Tariff era for ground-mounted solar, but also for new solar applications as Floating-PV and Agri-PV.
“Since entering the APAC region in 2015 we have already delivered over 400MW of renewable energy across solar and wind farm developments and large-scale C&I installations.”
