South Korea’s largest floating solar farm in Gunsan, N. Jeolla Province. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Jan. 25 (Korea Bizwire) — While renewable energy generation facilities are expanding rapidly on the back of the government’s policy to expand the distribution of new and renewable energy, the share of renewable energy among total power generation still remains negligible.
The overall capacity of the nation’s renewable energy facilities expanded by 4,485 megawatts (MW) in 2019, up about 29 percent from a year ago, according to statistics revealed by the Korea Energy Agency.
The cumulative capacity of the nation’s renewable energy facilities stood at 23,171 MW in 2019, up 50 percent from 2017 (15,703 MW) when the country set up the renewable energy 2030 action plan.
Despite the sharp increase in the overall capacity of the nation’s renewable energy facilities, renewable energy still accounts for only a fraction of the total energy output being generated.
According to data released by the Korea Electric Power Corp., the amount of power generated using new and renewable energy stood at 36,692 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2019, with its share of overall power generation estimated at 6.5 percent, up slightly from 6.2 percent a year ago.
Industry experts have pointed to the fact that the speed of expansion of electrical power system facilities is lagging behind the speed of development of new and renewable energy sources.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
