Building Japan’s Offshore Wind Innovation EcosystemLessons from Norway

in Japanese

Collaboration between academia, industry, and government is often cited as a critical driver of innovation and economic development in Japan. Yet in practice, the mechanisms of such collaboration—and the respective roles of each sector—remain uneven and sometimes unclear. How should knowledge be shared across these sectors? What contributions should each actor make? There is no universal model. However, in this column, I will examine one ecosystem that offers valuable insights: the collaborative framework among Norwegian universities, private companies, and government agencies.

Lessons from Norway — What Works

1) Applied R&D and test center
Facilities such as the Marine Energy Test Centre (METCentre) ¹provide critical real-world environments where companies can test floating wind concepts at sea. Projects such as TetraSpar and Hywind Demo progressed through this pathway. Without such facilities, innovative concepts cannot advance from models to certified, deployable technologies, just like no one will buy a car that has not been tested on the road, not matter how innovative the technology may be.

The METCentre is now supporting even more new pilot projects, including those led by Odfjell Oceanwind ²and Aikido Technologies.³

By contrast, Japan—despite having designated multiple test sites by the Cabinet ⁴still lacks an equivalent grid-connected offshore wind test center with a streamlined, industry-friendly application process. Such a facility is essential for accelerating innovation to commercial maturity and ensuring adherence to global industry standards.

2) Mission-driven public funding through ENOVA⁵
Norway’s government — through agencies like ENOVA — plays a key role in de-risking first-of-a-kind floating projects.

For example, ENOVA provided strategic funding that enabled Hywind Tampen⁶, now the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm. It is also supporting other innovative floating projects, such as::

• GoliatVIND (2 billion NOK)⁷— a 75-MW demonstration project
• Wind Catching Demo (1.2 billion NOK)⁸— a multi-turbine floating wind platform helping to scale Norwegian floating solutions.

In comparison, Japan’s current project-by-project subsidy model — such as the Green Innovation Fund ⁹— by NEDO offers no comparable consistent innovation pathway to help bring floating concepts to commercial maturity. NEDO provides subsidies up to 2/3 of the project cost, which means only established companies with a large capital can apply for NEDO funding. 

3) Building cross-disciplinary offshore wind expertise at Bergen Offshore Wind Center (BOW) and the University of Bergen¹⁰
The University of Bergen and the Bergen Offshore Wind Center (BOW) exemplify a cross-disciplinary approach to floating offshore wind innovation.

Their research spans marine science, spatial planning, environmental impact, offshore energy law, stakeholder engagement, and digital governance — all critical components for scaling sustainable offshore wind.

Academic researchers collaborate directly with industry leaders, such as Equinor on Hywind Tampen¹¹, and through broader joint initiatives. This model highlights the importance of embedding academic expertise within regional and industrial networks to drive sectoral progress.

4) Casy Study: Hywind Tampen¹²case
The Hywind Tampen project demonstrates how Norwegian government funding (ENOVA), a leading developer (Equinor), and the research community (including SINTEF¹³) collaborated to overcome key technical, regulatory, and financial barriers. Government support reduced financial risk; Equinor provided industrial leadership; and researchers advanced solutions in mooring, power system integration, and operations. Such coordinated effort between public and private players remains rare in Japan’s more fragmented innovation landscape.

Company-driven pull
Norwegian companies — led by Equinor and key suppliers, such as DOF Subsea¹⁴;— actively drive R&D priorities. Public agencies respond with mission-oriented support. In contrast, in Japan, research agendas often remain too government-driven and insufficiently connected to evolving industry needs.

Long-term relationships
Many successful Norwegian collaborations — such as those behind Hywind Tampen — evolved over 5–10 years of trust-building. This contrasts with Japan’s more frequent reliance on short-term, ad-hoc project consortia.

Openness to international collaboration
Norway actively engages in cross-border R&D partnerships, recognizing that scaling floating wind will require global knowledge exchange. Japan, by comparison, remains relatively closed in this regard, with respect to the Japanese-only guidelines and application materials.

5) Global Support via Innovation Norway
Innovation Norway¹⁵ fosters the broader innovation ecosystem — helping Norwegian SMEs and startups contribute to the floating wind value chain and develop exportable solutions. Japan lacks this type of dynamic, entrepreneurial ecosystem builder.

Japan’s Current Innovation Bottlenecks

In Japan, industry-government-academia collaboration — what we often call Sankangaku Renkei (産官学連携) — remains limited in both scope and impact.

• Much of Japan’s applied R&D is still driven by government agencies (i.e., NEDO¹⁶), with relatively weak connection to actual market needs.
• Industry tends to focus narrowly on winning research tenders, with limited appetite for pre-competitive collaboration on key challenges (e.g. floating foundations, mooring systems, grid integration).
• Universities and research institutes often lack sustained funding and institutional incentives to support long-term offshore wind innovation.
• Japan lacks an equivalent to UK’s joint industry programs (JIPs) led by Carbon Trust¹⁷or Norway’s test center ecosystems that bring companies together to solve shared technical bottlenecks.

Without stronger coordination, Japan risks losing competitiveness in floating offshore wind — an area where global competition is intensifying rapidly.

Why it Matters — the Innovation Gap

Floating  offshore wind is not simply a scaled-up version of fixed-bottom offshore wind. It brings unique engineering, cost, and operational challenges — from designing dynamic cables to ensuring turbine stability in deep water.

In addition, floating offshore wind requires a different market structure — one built on mass production and economies of scale. To become truly cost-competitive with other technologies, floating offshore wind must evolve like the automobile industry: moving from custom orders to serial production and embracing fabless design.

To commercialize floating offshore wind, Japan needs large-scale projects that are globally competitive. Without these, we can neither build a strong domestic supply chain nor create the conditions for true innovation.

Unless Japan invests in a more cohesive innovation system, its floating projects will struggle to achieve cost parity with global peers — undermining Japan’s broader energy transition goals.

Recommendations for Japan

With the establishment of FLOWRA¹⁸, Japan has begun strengthening international R&D partnerships with leading countries such as Norway, the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark.

However, to further close the innovation gap, Japan could consider:

1. Establishing a national offshore wind test center — including deep-water sites suitable for floating trials to foster technological innovation and standardization.
2. Shifting from one-off project subsidies to a mission-driven innovation fund for floating offshore wind.
3. Incentivizing long-term industry-government-academia partnerships — modeled on JIPs and the Hywind Tampen collaboration.

Floating offshore wind is one of Japan’s great industrial opportunities of this decade. But it will require more than auctions and subsidies — it will require building a true innovation ecosystem. Norway shows that this is possible. Japan should move quickly to build its own path forward.