MOL forges offshore wind and green hydrogen partnership

Japanese shipowner Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) has partnered up with EDF Renewables, a subsidiary of France’s utility EDF, to cooperate on the development of the offshore wind sector and to pursue opportunities in green hydrogen.

MOL established its offshore wind business in 2021 and has since been growing its marine renewables footprint with a number of technology investments as well as collaborations aimed at commercialising vessels related to projects in Japan and overseas.

Japan has set a goal of increasing offshore wind power generation capacity to 30–45 GW by 2040. Due to the country’s limited shallow-water sites where bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines can be installed, there is a strong domestic demand for practical floating offshore wind turbines that can be installed in deep water further from shore.

EDF Renewables has more than 10 years of experience in offshore wind, including leading technology development in floating wind, in which MOL has also been particularly focused, having most recently put money into Dutch floater startup TouchWind.

Japan, in June this year, identified hydrogen as the alternative to fossil fuels as it targets decarbonisation committing to a target of 3m tons a year of hydrogen by 2030, 12m tons a year by 2040, and 20m tons a year by 2050.

The country’s largest shipowners have already joined forces to quickly build up Japan’s maritime hydrogen supply chains, and MOL is also investing overseas, to help accelerate the development and adoption of clean hydrogen-ammonia within its fleet and customer base.

EDF Renewables established a base in Japan in June 2022 with a local team based in Tokyo to study opportunities to develop green hydrogen projects, in line with its plan that aims to develop 3 GW of electrolytic hydrogen projects worldwide by 2030.