What separates offshore wind bids once a lower price stops earning extra points? Japan’s June 2026 auction reform keeps price and business feasibility at 120 points each, but changes how bidders compete within those totals. Points for vessel, supplier and schedule evidence have grown within that total. How much they decide the winner depends on how each tender sets its price scoring.
👉 Background: Japan’s offshore wind policy framework
Ten points move from speed to execution and supply chains
Winning an auction secures a developer’s selection. Electricity arrives only if the project gets built. The cancellation of three Round 1 projects off Akita and Chiba prompted a review of Japan’s tender rules from September 2025. Consultation ran from 22 January to 22 February 2026, followed by revised general guidelines on 5 June.
The Operational Guidelines for the Occupancy Public Tender System in General Sea Areas govern developer selection in designated promotion zones. They sit under Japan’s offshore renewables legislation.
Business feasibility already carried 120 points in Rounds 2 and 3. The change is inside that total. Speed falls from 20 points to ten. Execution planning and stable power supply, now including supply-chain development, gain five points each.
| Category | Previous | Revised |
|---|---|---|
| Speed of project delivery | 20 | 10 |
| Project foundations: organisation, track record and finances | 20 | 20 |
| Execution planning | 20 | 25 |
| Stable power supply, now including supply-chain development | 20 | 25 |
| Local coordination and economic effects | 40 | 40 |
| Total business feasibility | 120 | 120 |
Sources: 42nd joint offshore wind meeting, document 1, slide 4; revised guidelines, printed page 9. Each zone’s tender guidelines, the conditions the government sets for that zone’s auction, apply these principles in detail.
The 20-point project-foundations category comprises organisation and experience, worth six points, and financial planning, worth 14. Execution planning assigns 20 points before operation and five thereafter. Local coordination and economic effects retain four categories of ten points each: public-authority coordination, coexistence with navigation and fisheries, local economic effects, and domestic economic effects.
Below the 120-point threshold, what does a cheaper bid gain?
The new mechanism uses an assumed supply price range. This is the gap between the supply price cap and a price reflecting project-completion costs with realistic efficiency improvements.
A bid at or below the supply price cap minus that range receives the maximum 120 price points. Bidding further below the threshold earns no additional price points. The threshold only sets the score. Permitted bid prices and the revenue a developer receives are set by other rules.
The range and the score awarded at the price cap depend on the business environment of the tender. The working-group paper illustrated a score of 100 at the cap, leaving a 20-point gap to the maximum. The final guidelines leave that score to each tender. A bid exceeding the supply price cap fails the conformity assessment.
Once a bidder reaches the maximum, another price cut buys no additional price points. Competition then turns to the evidence behind construction and procurement plans. If price scores sit closer together, feasibility differences decide more of the outcome.
The size of that effect depends on the threshold and the score at the price cap. The unchanged 120-point totals alone say little about how close the competition will be.
Securing a vessel: what evidence earns the points?
A construction schedule needs a vessel available when the work is due. Procurement depends on negotiations progressing towards contracts. At its January 2026 meeting, the government’s working group gave vessel availability and negotiation milestones as examples of what to assess.
Feasibility categories other than speed use checklist scoring. Basic criteria check that required matters have been addressed. Advanced criteria assess the detail, specificity, appropriateness and certainty of the proposal. Each receives half of the category’s points.
Score for each criterion group = allocated points × checks satisfied ÷ total checks in that group.
Basic and advanced scores are calculated separately and added. A group with more points and fewer checks therefore rewards each satisfied check more heavily.
Developers therefore need both a description of the proposed work and evidence behind it. Each zone’s checklist and application forms set how far a contract or negotiation must go to satisfy a check.
👉 Japan’s Offshore Wind Project Selection Criteria
How the 10 speed points are calculated
Offering an earlier commissioning date alone will not secure all ten speed points. The formula also applies the bidder’s project-foundations and execution score. Bidders proposing the same construction period can therefore earn different speed scores if the supporting plans receive different assessments.
The period runs from developer selection to commissioning, including an appropriate contingency period. It is compared with the shortest qualifying construction period.
Speed score = 10 × (benchmark shortest period ÷ proposed period) × (project-foundations and execution score ÷ 45).
A combined score below 22.5 out of 45 makes the speed score zero. At 22.5 or above, the formula applies. The shortest-period benchmark is drawn from bidders scoring more than 22.5 on those categories. The final text uses different thresholds for receiving a speed score and establishing that benchmark.
The feasibility safeguard existed under the previous system. The changes concern the ten-point maximum, relative rather than stepped schedule scoring, and the explicit treatment of contingency. The general guidelines call only for an “appropriate” contingency period, so its length must be checked tender by tender.
25-year plans allowed, support stays at 20 years
After selection, the project still has to pay for construction and repay its borrowing from electricity revenues. Here, the years a plant runs and the years its revenue is supported start to diverge.
The guidelines allow an applicant to propose an operating period exceeding 20 years, for example 25. Their explanation assumes the support period remains 20 years: generation can continue afterwards without the applicable procurement or reference price.
Missing the commissioning deadline stated in the plan can lead to a shorter support period. Developers therefore need to reconcile schedule contingency, the commissioning commitment and the years of supported revenue available for repayment.
Lenders assess the revenue available during the loan’s repayment period. That requires separate assumptions for the awarded supply price, power-sale contracts, post-support electricity prices and any reduction in support caused by delay. A maximum price score wins selection. Financing still needs a project-specific review of revenues, costs and the risk allocation in contracts.
Price risk is also being addressed outside the scoring rules. The January 2026 working-group paper stated that a price-adjustment scheme linking the feed-in premium reference price to inflation would apply from the next tender. Feed-in premium support supplements revenue from selling electricity in the market. Eligible costs and calculation methods should be checked in the documents that apply to each tender.
👉 Japan’s Offshore Wind Cost Breakdown
The DeepWind Viability Simulator can help compare cost and electricity-revenue assumptions. Individual tender requirements and lender assessments remain separate checks.
Zone-specific conditions determine the actual competition
Each zone’s tender guidelines establish the competition’s conditions. The occupancy plan is the developer’s proposal in response. Promotion-zone designation guidelines cover an earlier decision: which sea areas should enter the process.
The ministries’ June announcement said the detailed contents of award limits and withdrawal rules would be set in each zone’s tender guidelines. Bidders will learn the capacity they may win and their exposure on withdrawal only from those zone documents.
The zone documents are therefore the place to check the price cap, assumed price range, checklists and schedule conditions. They also need to be read alongside guarantee requirements, withdrawal provisions and applicable price-adjustment rules. This article covers the June 2026 general framework; dates and prices for individual re-tenders appear in each zone’s notice.
👉 How Promotion-Zone Designation Guidelines Differ from Tender Rules
The reform’s effectiveness will depend on whether delivery evidence changes scores and survives the transition from selection to contracts.
More detailed submissions can improve transparency, but their value depends on what the checks distinguish. If bidders all satisfy the basic criteria and advanced criteria produce little separation, the formal detail may have limited influence on the selected plan. Conversely, meaningful differences in evidence about procurement, construction and project finances can change the result within an unchanged 120-point total. The assessment needs to distinguish a plausible intention from a plan supported by credible commitments.
The next things to watch are the content of advanced criteria, the distribution of awarded scores, and the subsequent conversion of procurement and construction commitments into contracts. Changes after selection also matter: the conditions for permitting them should preserve the substance of what earned points. Those will show whether the framework rewards delivery or simply longer application forms.
Related DeepWind Articles
- 👉 Why Japan Is Reforming Offshore Wind Project Selection
- 👉 Why Japan’s Offshore Wind Round 1 Ended in Withdrawal
Sources
- METI/MLIT, Operational Guidelines for the Occupancy Public Tender System in General Sea Areas, June 2026 revision (Japanese).
- 42nd joint offshore wind meeting: New Tender System to Enable Offshore Wind Project Completion, 21 January 2026 (Japanese).
- MLIT announcement of the revised guidelines, 5 June 2026 (Japanese).
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