Royal Dutch Shell has started to sell electricity to businesses on the Japanese retail power market, benefiting from the increasing liberalisation of the Japanese electricity market. Shell registered as a retail electricity seller in November 2018 and is procuring electricity on the wholesale market. The company will enter the Japanese market for virtual power plants, which will be launched in fiscal year 2021.
The deregulation of the retail market was launched in 2016 under the Policy on the Electricity System Reform and the residential sector was opened to competition. The unbundling of the power transmission and distribution activities is planned for April 2020. This market opening reform ends the monopoly of the ten regional electricity companies and aims to boost competition and lower prices, which are among the highest in the world. Utilities have long been opposed to such a move, but the Fukushima accident has weakened their lobbying power.