South Korea is one of the countries in Southeast Asia that is most dependent on fossil fuels, but they now want to change that. Last year, the president, Moon Jae-in, presented a Green New Deal that will make the country carbon neutral by 2050, and an important step in that direction was taken in early February.
Then a project started to build a new huge offshore wind farm . The plant will have a maximum capacity of 8.2 gigawatts when it is fully completed in 2030. For comparison, we can mention that today’s largest wind power plant, in the UK, has a maximum capacity of 1.12 gigawatts.
The cost will be 48.5 billion won, corresponding to approximately SEK 360 billion. This makes the plant both the largest and most expensive wind power plant that has received the green light to date. According to spokespersons for the president, the new wind farm will correspond to six nuclear power reactors in terms of electricity production.
With this and other expansions, South Korea expects wind power to generate 16.5 gigawatts by 2030. That is almost exactly ten times as much as today when wind power produces 1.67 gigawatts in South Korea.
If we look at the environmental effect, the spokespersons say that the facility provides the same environmental effect as planting 71 million trees. In addition to environmental effects, this will generate a lot of new jobs. According to the plans, 5,600 people will work on building the power plants over the next ten years.
In total, South Korea expects to be able to both decommission all fossil fuel power plants and seven of its 24 nuclear power plants and replace them with renewable electricity by 2034. The country will thus need to make more major investments in various renewable energy sources.
