Japan opens up its US$67b retail electricity market

Tokyo

SPEND a few minutes to fill in a single-page form from a government website. Mail it in. That's all you need to register as a power producer in Japan as the country opens its US$67 billion retail electricity market.

More than 750 applicants, from rice farmers to billionaire Masayoshi Son's mobile carrier SoftBank Group Corp, have signed up to provide electricity and compete with the existing 10 regional monopolies. Fewer than 100 of them are already supplying power to the industrial market that's already been deregulated. They have almost doubled their share over the last three years and now account for about 5 per cent of Japan's supply.

While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushes for the return of nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster led to the shutdown of the country's reactors, he's also promoting liberalisation as a way to reduce costs and increase grid reliability for residential consumers. Canadian Solar Inc and South Korea's Hanwha Q Cells Co have been lured by the possibility of getting a piece of Asia's third-largest energy market. Increased competition may help drive retail electricity costs down by 15 pe…