South Korea's offshore wind power ambition

Sources: energynews24.com, Seri Quarterly, Global Wind Energy Council

Wind power, the most price-competitive among renewable energy resources, is experiencing a rapid expansion in the global market and emerging as one of Korea’s new growth engines. Korea has unfavorable conditions for the development of wind farms because of its small geographic size and limited wind power resources in many areas. However, these disadvantages are now playing a driving role in the future development of Korea’s industry, strategically forcing it towards offshore wind power and an export driven wind energy industry.

Following the announcement of a development strategy for its green energy industry in 2008, the Korean government began to focus on offshore instead of onshore wind power. Korea aims to establish offshore wind farms amounting to 2GW by 2020. The other goal is to enter the global market in which Korean companies will be looking to penetrate via competitiveness in terms of technology, market share, and financing. Although offshore wind power is much more costly to build and maintain compared to onshore facilities, the former also has many advantages, which the latter lacks. Experts are predicting that the future of wind energy lies offshore.