Toyota Tsusho Corporation, the trading arm of the Toyota Group, inked an agreement with Japan-based renewable energy developer SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group (SBG), to acquire an 85% stake in the latter.

The transaction will help the clean energy businesses of the two companies by accelerating their carbon-neutral initiatives.

Under the agreement, both companies would jointly develop renewable energy and electric power supply-demand adjustment, among other measures, to achieve carbon neutrality in their respective operations.

Once the transaction reaches the completion stage, SB Energy will become a subsidiary of Tsusho Corporation with an 85% stock ownership ratio and an affiliate of SBG with a 15% stock ownership.

Tsusho Corporation is actively expanding its clean energy business through its subsidiary Eurus Energy Holdings Corporation, a wind power generator in Japan that owns a renewable generation capacity of approximately 3.7 GW as of December 2022, which includes over 3 GW of wind power and 350 MW of solar power.

SB Energy has constructed and operated a total of 773 MW of clean capacity in Japan since 2011. The capacity comprises 667.1 MW of solar and 55.9 MW of wind. The company also operates outside Japan and owns 50 MW of wind capacity in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia.

Chairman and CEO of SBG Group Masayoshi Son said, “We are delighted to work with Toyota Tsusho, a leading company in the industry, to take the promotion of renewable energy to the next level toward further growth in the future.”

In July 2021, Suzuki Motor Corporation and Daihatsu Motor announced that they would each acquire 10% of issued shares of Commercial Japan Partnership (CJP) Technologies, the joint venture for the CJP initiative, from Toyota Motor Corporation.

CJP is a commercial vehicle project to accelerate steps towards carbon neutrality drives in mini vehicles.

President and CEO of Toyota Tsusho, Ichiro Kashitani, said, “I am confident that SB Energy’s expertise in advanced efforts will provide us the opportunity to further promote our carbon neutrality efforts in an unparalleled way.”

Last November, SB Energy Global said that Google would purchase approximately 942 MW or 75% of renewable energy produced by the former’s four upcoming solar projects with a combined capacity of 1.2 GW based out in Texas.