As the chimes of the huge clock rang in the New Year, the whole world is recognizing COVID-19 might play out in 2021 and beyond. Nations and economies are busy in an attempt to reset, revitalize and recover from this pandemic crisis, Korean is no exception, their crisis response included but not limited to spending fiscal stimulus on renewable energy and clean technologies to create more new jobs as well as being able to address the climate change issues.

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Based on fossil fuels plays a major role in Korea’s energy sector that in 2018 has even accounted for nearly 85% of the total primary energy supply, and the share of coal power generation occupied 40.4% in 2019, but expected to be decreased to 29.9% in 2030. Korean President has launched the Korean New Deal which involves $61.9 billion to creating 319,000 jobs by 2022 and 659,000 by 2025, country’s net carbon emissions needs to achieve by 2025 as well.

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According to the Green New Deal, the government plans to expand solar panels and wind turbines to 29.4 GW in 2022, up from 18 GW last year, especially solar panels are expected to be installed on nearly 225,000 public buildings. To achieve energy-saving and emission reduction, the government will put efforts into establishing new smart grids to help energy utility being able to respond to customers more directly through advanced digital technology, and energy storage systems will be also focused on especially in specific areas such as islands or mountainous terrain. Korean government also committed to increasing the maximum amount of installed power generation capacity to 58 GW (33%) by 2030 and to 77.8 GW (40.3%) by 2034. LNG power generation will climb to 54.5 GW by 2030 from 39.7 GW in 2019 and Wind Capacity is expected to reach 8 GW by 2030.

 

Meanwhile, Jeju power control relaxation plan and power generation constraint minimization plan by using ESS has also been launched, in Jeju island substation, 95MW/35MWh ESS will be installed for renewable generation limitation and the microgrid ESS system will also start for 42 islands around 0.5GWh battery but still at the designing stage.

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Furthermore, Korean third-largest conglomerate - SK Group, became the first from the country to be members of the global RE100 initiative, that committed to transitioning to 100% renewable power in the future. Undoubtedly, Korean needs a jolt to reinforce its determination to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 to disengage their energy sectors from a strong dependence on fossil fuels and energy imports. There is still a long way to achieve those targeted usages of renewable energy in the generation mix by 2034.

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The Korea Energy Agency may allocate 2GW in April and October, the next tender’s capacity is might to be about 300 to 500 MW higher than the 1.4 GW of last year. KEA will assign fixed-price contracts for different categories of projects which consisted of small-sized rooftop arrays and large-scale solar plants. MOIT also announced its decision to help the development of unsubsidized solar by pushing the introduced PPAs and related policies.

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To explore more potentials and help to boost the renewable energy development in Korean, Energy Box is going to organize a webinar entitled: “The Future of Korean REC Subsidies and Energy Storage Market” scheduled on 22 of April, which is demonstrated to provide you a better understanding of its market, including presentation, panel discussion and Q&A.

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