ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it has acquired additional outstanding shares of TRENDE Inc. (headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Tadatoshi Senoo, CEO; hereinafter “TRENDE”), which develops technologies for peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading^*1 and provides rooftop solar power services for households. As a result, TRENDE will be a consolidated subsidiary of ITOCHU.

Established in 2017, TRENDE has been working on developing technology for P2P electricity trading while expanding its customer base through rooftop solar power services for households, as a subsidiary of TEPCO Ventures, Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Shinji Akatsuka, President & Representative Director; hereafter, “TEPCO Ventures”).

While the introduction of renewable energy is accelerating, fluctuations in the demand–supply balance and increase of power prices have been social issues. This has led to rising expectations for the spread of distributed power resources and P2P electricity trading as the next-generation energy management platform.
While ITOCHU formed a capital and business alliance with TRENDE in June 2020, TRENDE was proceeding with a joint demonstration project of P2P electricity trading with the University of Tokyo and Toyota Motor Corporation, and confirmed the validity of the technology^*2.

This time, ITOCHU has acquired all of the shares in TRENDE that were held by TEPCO Ventures and then will make TRENDE its consolidated subsidiary. ITOCHU will link technologies of TRENDE with the distributed power resources, energy storage systems, and energy management business foundations as its strengths, thus concretizing P2P electricity trading, aiming for optimization of the demand–supply balance within communities and local production-consumption of electricity.
Specifically, ITOCHU will move ahead with social implementation in the field of decarbonization solutions with partners that have diverse customer base, such as a power interchange project^*3 with the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations that is based on local production for local consumption by using P2P electricity trading technologies.

Reference：
ITOCHU Announces Acquisition of an Equity Stake in TRENDE Inc. for Realizing a Next-Generation, Renewable Energy-Oriented Society (June 18, 2020)
https://www.itochu.co.jp/en/news/press/2020/200618.html