Chubu Electric Power Co., Japan’s third-biggest energy utility, plans to invest as much as 800 billion yen ($9.8 billion) overseas by 2030, increasing its foreign business by more than 10 times as domestic demand falls.
The Nagoya-based company will invest 300 billion yen in overseas electricity generation and as much as 500 billion yen in businesses to procure fuel and develop renewable energy, Yuji Koyama, group leader of corporate planning and strategy, told reporters in Tokyo today. Chubu Electric has invested about 60 billion yen overseas, he said.
Energy utilities are among Japanese companies that are looking overseas as a falling population erodes demand for services and products. Tokyo Electric Power Co., Asia’s biggest power utility, plans to invest as much as 1 trillion yen mostly overseas by 2020, it said in September.
“Japan is facing a major period of transition,” Chubu Electric said in an English-language statement on its website. “In addition to problems with a declining birthrate, an aging population, and energy resources, the country is also facing responses to global warming and other such issues.”
Chubu Electric is targeting pretax profit of more than 50 billion yen from overseas business by 2030, a Japanese-language outline said. It aims to have 10 gigawatts of electricity capacity overseas, up from 1.1 gigawatts now.
Domestic business
The company, which has 10 million customers in Nagoya, west of Tokyo, and nearby regions, plans to increase annual electricity sales from 123 billion kilowatts to 140 billion kilowatts.
Chubu Electric wants to add as much as 4,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity in Japan by 2030 as part of efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it said. That’s in addition to a new 1,400 megawatt unit at its Hamaoka station, southwest of Tokyo, it announced earlier.
The company is also aiming to increase natural gas sales from 530,000 metric tons to 2 million metric tons, it said.
Details of the management plan, including timing of investments and locations of projects, haven’t been decided, Koyama said.
Chubu Electric said on Jan. 28 that net income for the nine months to Dec. 31 rose 1.5 percent to 100 billion yen. The company’s shares fell 1.3 percent today. It announced the plan after the market closed.
