Trading house Mitsui & Co. will build a large solar power station in Higashi-Matsushima, Miyagi Prefecture, a city that suffered damage to about 30 percent of its land area in the March 11 disaster.
Trading house Mitsui & Co. will build a large solar power station in Higashi-Matsushima, Miyagi Prefecture, a city that suffered damage to about 30 percent of its land area in the March 11 disaster.
Mitsui plans to complete a 2-megawatt facility, capable of supplying about 500 households, in 2012 and sell all electricity to Tohoku Electric Power Co., sources said Nov. 25.
The city government hopes the project will attract companies related to solar power generation and create jobs.
The plant, about the size of Tokyo Dome, will stand on a city-owned plot along the Pacific coast. Mitsui and the city government will consider expanding the plant in the future.
Large solar power plants are planned in many areas hit by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
A key incentive for companies and municipalities is a law enacted by the Diet in August that requires utilities to buy all electricity generated from renewable sources at fixed prices.
Toyota Motor Corp. plans to build a 12-megawatt facility in Kunimi, Fukushima Prefecture, as early as 2012 to supply a vegetable factory.
In Higashi-Matsushima, many residents have been forced to relocate since the tsunami damaged about 30 square kilometers of the city's area.
A key challenge for the city is finding a way to use vacated residential areas and rice paddies inundated with seawater.
The city government backed a solar power station plan because rehabilitating those areas into farmland would be costly and time-consuming.