Background
While Korea’s offshore wind industry is at its initial stage of development, the industry stands at a turning point with the election of President Moon Jae-in in 2017. By reducing the country’s reliance on coal and nuclear energy, Moon’s energy policy focuses on increasing renewable and other clean energy in order to bring Korea’s use of renewable energy to OECD standards. New offshore wind facilities with installed capacity of 12GW are targeted to be built in Korea between 2018 and 2030 in accordance with the “Renewable Energy 3020” implementation plan announced by the Government on 20 December 2017, which sets out the Government’s plan to increase the share of renewable energy from 7.0% in 2016 to 20% by the year 2030. This initiative has been reaffirmed in the “3rd Basic Energy Plan” released by the Government in June 2019 which sets out a more long-term target of increasing the share of energy generated from renewable sources to 30-35% by the year 2040 and ceasing the build of new coal-fired or nuclear power plants. A detailed plan on how this could be achieved will be addressed and implemented in the “9th Basic Plan for Long-term Electricity Supply and Demand” which is expected to be released by the end of 2019.
