Scotland’s national economic development agency, Scottish Enterprise, and Japanese conglomerate Marubeni Corporation have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly explore opportunities in floating offshore wind and green hydrogen.

The new partners have identified three key areas of collaboration as part of the agreement, including projects in floating offshore wind and the development and installation of energy management systems, the establishment of an offshore wind supply chain and a green hydrogen value chain, and hosting joint educational programmes between Japanese and Scottish university students.

Marubeni, which is leading a consortium behind Japan’s first commercial offshore wind farm and is also participating in two floating offshore wind demonstration projects in its home country, last year teamed up with Scotland-headquartered SSE Renewables and Danish fund management company Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) to bid in the ScotWind leasing process this year.

For Scottish Enterprise, the agreement with Marubeni was signed at the same time the agency commissioned an international collaboration project on green hydrogen, called ‘Scot2Ger’, to explore future export opportunities for Scotland’s green hydrogen.

led by ScottishPower, Wood, KPMG Germany and DS Consulting, will examine the emerging and substantial German demand for zero-emission hydrogen and how it could be met by green hydrogen produced in Scotland.

“[By] establishing a supply chain and customer relationships now, we can create a competitive advantage for Scotland when hydrogen will be available in the future at scale produced from offshore wind in the North Sea”, said David Scrimgeour of DS Consulting.