
On December 23, 2024, Singapore’s Equis Development and Tohoku Electric Power commissioned the 50MW “Niigata East Port Biomass Power Plant” in Seiko Town, Niigata Prefecture.
The power plant is expected to generate approximately 360GWh per year using wood pellets and palm kernel shells. The generated power is being sold to Tohoku EPCO’s transmission and distribution arm under a 20-year feed-in-tariff (FIT) contract. When the power plant was FIT-certified in March 2017, the tariff offered for biomass generation using regular woody biomass fuels was 24 yen per kWh.
Financing for the project, which is 80% owned by Equis Development and 20% by Tohoku EPCO, was secured through a 28 billion yen loan arranged by Daishi Hokuetsu Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank. Tohoku EPCO was in charge of the project’s owner’s engineering and is in charge of its operation and maintenance (O&M) as well. Toyo Engineering was the project’s engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor.
Commissioning of the Niigata East Port Biomass Power Plant comes less than two months after Tohoku EPCO commissioned the 53MW Chokai Biomass Power Plant in Yamagata Prefecture. Equis Development’s portfolio also includes other biomass projects in Japan. Most recently, the company was awarded two biomass projects in Hokkaido in the long-term decarbonization auction.