Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) — Mizuho Financial Group Inc. will lead
a group of Japanese companies to build a solar plant in Gujarat
as India targets an eightfold expansion in sun-powered capacity.
The facility will be able to generate as much as 200
megawatts and may cost as much as 30 billion yen ($325 million),
Masako Shiono, a company spokeswoman, said today by telephone.
Mizuho’s corporate lending unit signed a memorandum of
understanding with Gujarat’s government in January, she said.
Clean-energy investors are looking to India as government
incentives such as lower tax rates and cheaper raw materials
drive down costs. The country, seeking to cut chronic power
shortages as coal and gas fall short, released a draft policy in
December targeting 9,000 megawatts of grid-connected solar
plants by 2017, more than eight times its current capacity.
Kyocera Corp. may supply solar panels to the Mizuho
project, the Nikkei newspaper reported earlier, without saying
where it got the information.
Several companies are considering taking part, according to
Shiono, who said the plant’s capacity may be expanded to 2,200
megawatts.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo at
cwatanabe5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net
