Mizuho to Lead a Japanese Consortium to Build Indian Solar Power Plant

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (8411) 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. (6971) 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.