The Other Country Losing Offshore Wind Developers

 June 29, 2026

The U.S. isn’t the only country losing offshore wind developers

For much of the past decade, Japan looked primed for offshore wind development for the same reasons the American industry first took root in the Northeast: It’s coastal, densely populated, and — with its nuclear power stations either shut down or idled — it’s more reliant on fossil fuels that it doesn’t locally produce than ever before. But building turbines off Japan’s shores has proven tricky as project costs ballooned. On Friday, Norway’s Equinor announced its decision to close its offshore wind division in Japan, after failing to win any leases at repeated auctions over the past eight years. “This decision reflects a reassessment of Equinor’s strategic direction, with a strengthened focus on integrated power markets,” the company said in a statement on its Japanese website.

The move comes two years after Denmark’s Orsted exited Japan. Last August, a consortium led by the industrial giant Mitsubishi pulled out of Japan’s first three offshore wind projects citing what Reuters described as concerns of surging costs. Last October, as I told you at the time, the newly elected government of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi postponed a key procedural step for setting government funding levels for offshore wind projects. Instead, as you may recall, Takaichi has put a heavy focus on restarting the nuclear reactors mothballed after the 2011 Fukushima disaster and even expanding the fleet.

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