Japan's largest thermal power generation company JERA, the joint venture (JV) of TEPCO and Chubu Electric, has announced plans to invest 70% of its investment budget for the next seven years on renewable energy and LNG projects. The renewable energy spendings will help boost its capacity from the current 650 MW to 5 GW by 2025 (up from a previous target of 3 GW). JERA will also consider phasing out inefficient coal-fired power plants in the near future.
The JERA joint venture was set up in February 2015 to integrate both companies’ existing fuel businesses (upstream and procurement). JERA also operates TEPCO's and Chubu Electric's LNG terminal and, in April 2019, integrated the companies' thermal power generation businesses, i.e. around 68 GW of coal-fired and gas-fired power capacity in Japan and 9 GW. JERA will now control JPY4,000bn (US$36bn) of assets and cover the entire supply chain for power generation.