You’ve got to love the Japanese response to their Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda. On the 9th of June Mr Fukuda called for a tenfold increase in solar power by 2020. Within a month Showa Shell Sekiyu, the Japanese subsidiary of Shell and the country’s fifth-largest oil refiner, announced plans to invest 100 billion yen (about £470 m) in a solar-panel megaplant,
Construction is planned to begin in 2011, the location is yet to be decided.
Speaking to AFP an unnamed spokesman stated ‘the new plant would have an annual capacity of 1,000 megawatts, equivalent to that of a regular-sized nuclear power reactor, and outdistancing Sharp’s domestic plant, [announced last month] which has an estimated 710 megawatts a year.’
“We hope that the solar panel businesses will be the second pillar of our earnings” as soaring oil prices encourage energy saving, he said.
Putting the site in context. Greenbang recently reported on a site in Portugal estimated to be the world’s largest. This site will produce 45MW of electricity each year, enough to power 30,000 homes. Japan’s definitely gone big on this one with the 1GW plant should be enough to power over 600,000 homes.