July 9, 2014
By Chisaki Watanabe and Finbarr Flynn

Deutsche Bank (click here) plans to lend about $US1 billion ($1.06 billion) for Japanese solar projects, joining Goldman Sachs in funding cleaner energy as the government struggles to restart nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster.
The bank is ready to provide financing for three to six projects in the next 12 to 18 months, said Hans Van Der Sande, director of Deutsche Bank's structured products group at its Tokyo branch. The Frankfurt-based lender agreed last month to provide a 11.1 billion yen ($116 million) loan for a solar power project on a former golf course north of Tokyo to be operated by a unit of Spain's Gestamp Renewables Corp.
Japan may add the most solar power capacity in the world this year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, as a two- year-old incentive program attracted investors including Goldman Sachs. Even so, renewable energy accounts for less than 11 per cent of its total production, compared with 31 per cent in Germany, leaving the nation reliant on fuel imports after the closure of all of its atomic reactors and contributing to 23 straight months of trade deficits.
"Every time a country implements these very, very attractive standards you have a gold rush and that gold rush started two years ago," Van Der Sande said in an interview. "Now the water is kind of pulling back, smaller people are leaving and the real players are staying."
Deutsche Bank declined to disclose the interest rates for the solar loans. The average new lending rate in Japan was a record-low 0.779 per cent in May, according to central bank data. Average interest margins on dollar lending in the Asia-Pacific region outside of Japan were 2.35 percentage points so far in 2014, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.