Royal Dutch Shell, one of the six oil and gas "super-majors," has finally sets it foot in the Japan’s electricity market, which is considered one of the world’s richest electricity markets.
RDS is the second-largest energy firm by market capitalization. In a media briefing at it's Singapore office on Wednesday, representatives said that it has set up a small desk to trade electricity in Japan, where it is in an "experimental" phase of learning to buy and sell power and to identify industrial customers.
Royal Dutch Shell is one of the first major foreign companies to quietly foray into the Japanese market, which became deregulated in 2016, after being dominated by regional players for nearly five decades.
According to RDS’s executive vice president of new energies, Mark Gainsborough, opportunities for traders to help balance the grid will expand as more industrial and commercial users begin generating power on their own premises. He further added that the move was in-line with company strategy, as it sees opportunities to balance the grid when there are supply-demand mismatches driven by intermittent wind and solar power.
Japan, which meets nearly 15% of its electricity requirement from renewable sources, saw its power sales hover around 14 trillion yen ($125 billion) in 2017.