Japan's 2025-26 FiP, FiT small biomass price unchanged

Japan's trade and industry ministry (Meti) has decided to maintain the feed-in-premium (FiP) and feed-in-tariff (FiT) price for small biomass power projects at ¥24/kWh ($160/MWh) for the April 2025-March 2026 fiscal year.

The purchasing cost of electricity applies to projects that use general woody and agricultural biomass with less than 10MW capacity under the FiP scheme. Plants with capacity between 50kW-1MW can choose the FiT scheme if the projects can contribute to regional development. The general biomass fuels include imported and domestically produced woody material such as chips and pellets, palm kernel shells and palm trunk. The new price will be the same as 2024-25.

The FiP price for a general biomass power plant with more than 10MW and a palm oil-fired plant with no capacity limit is decided through a tender system, which was launched in 2018-19 to enhance market competitiveness of biomass power projects. The 2024-25 tender is scheduled to be completed in November with it seeking 120MW of capacity. But the committee under Meti is considering reducing the tender biomass capacity to 30MW as there has been no bidders since 2021-22, while giving a flexibility to raise the upper limit to 140MW, in case larger projects join the tender.

By Nanami Oki