Japanese telco NTT’s western Japanese unit, NTT West, has signed a geothermal virtual Power Purchase Agreement with Furusato Thermal Power Co Ltd.

The deal will see NTT West purchase non-fossil certificates generated by a 4.99MW geothermal plant located in Kumamoto Prefecture. The Waita No. 2 geothermal power plant began commercial operations in March of this year. The VPPA came into effect on June 1. The VPPA is expected to run until 2041.

The conventional geothermal plant is expected to generate approximately 35 million kWh of electricity per year and support NTT West’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2040.

The Waita No. 2 project was developed in collaboration with Waita-kai LLC, an organization representing residents in the local area. Furusato is backed by Baseload Capital, a global developer of geothermal projects, which previously signed a 10MW PPA with Google in Taiwan.

"Waita No. 2 is important not only because we commissioned a geothermal power plant," said Alexander Helling, CEO of Baseload Capital. "It is important because it demonstrates that geothermal development in Japan can be done in a way that creates trust locally, aligns incentives, and becomes repeatable. That changes the conversation from one isolated project to long-term market potential."

Founded in 1999, NTT West provides communications solutions, including fiber services, to western Japan. According to the company, it has at least one data center in each of the 30 prefectures in western Japan, including Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Hokuriku, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Hiroshima, and Ehime.

Several tech companies have signed geothermal PPAs in recent years, some tied to conventional projects, such as NTT West and Global Switch, while others have backed Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), which promise much higher capacity factors but have yet to be commercialized. Firms to back EGS projects include Google, Amazon, and Meta.