Tohoku Electric Power began supplying power to TOPPAN Holdings on March 26, 2025, through a hybrid wind-hydro off-site PPA, the company said on April 17, 2025.
The utility, acting as the retailer, procures power from the 6MW Niigata City Umibe no Mori Wind Power Plant, the 810kW Oshida Dam Hydro Power Plant in Ichinohe Town, Iwate Prefecture, and the 2.23MW Asaka Canal Management Hydro Power Plant in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture. The company delivers it to four TOPPAN group branches in Tohoku’s Niigata, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures.
Under the 20-year deal, Tohoku EPCO expects to supply the printing company with about 27GWh annually, including 13GWh from the wind power plant and 5GWh and 10GWh from the two hydro assets (figures rounded). The power is expected to cover about 25% of the four branches’ consumption.
Umibe no Mori Wind Power Plant, owned by HSE’s subsidiary Kuroshio Wind Power Generation, was commissioned on February 1, 2025. METI data shows the project was originally certified under the feed-in-tariff (FIT) scheme in FY2015 when wind projects 20kW or larger were offered 22 yen for 20 years before being switched to the market-based feed-in-premium (FIP) scheme to allow the PPA.
The two hydro power plants are owned by National Federation of Land Improvement Associations members Mabechi River Coastal Land Improvement District and Asaka Canal Land Improvement District, respectively. The smaller asset was commissioned in 2009 and the larger one in 2004.
According to Japan Energy Hub’s PPA database, this is the first deal packaging wind and hydro power together. It follows an increasing number of agreements using either of the technologies in the market dominated by solar.
TOPPAN Holdings plans to continue expanding its renewables procurement to cover 25% or more of all of its group facilities’ power consumption by 2030.
