Korea fires up renewables

Air pollution in Seoul

From Reuters:

Facing choking smog in its major cities and under pressure to meet emission reduction targets, the world’s fourth-biggest coal importer is expected to accelerate targets for green energy in an updated 15-year energy plan later this year.

Long seen as a laggard [compared to] Japan in moving away from coal, the government now looks set to close some 20 ageing coal-fired generators and broaden operating caps at others, say advisers and energy experts.

“We have a big challenge ahead to reduce carbon emissions. To some degree, we could do it by expanding renewable power but that won’t be enough to cut emissions so we need to think about reducing coal power and weigh the costs of that change,” said Park Jong-bae, professor of electrical engineering at Konkuk University.

South Korea began its transition to cleaner energy in a 2017 power supply plan that aimed to boost the share of renewables from about 6% to 20% by 2030, while scaling back coal and unpopular nuclear.

Amid public anger, the government in March designated pollution a “social disaster”, and a month later pledged to boost renewable energy to up to 35% of total energy supplies by 2040.

The 2019 energy plan is expected to reflect the push for even more renewables and more gas-fired power at the expense of coal, imported from countries such as Indonesia, Australia and Russia.

Coal imports fell nearly 9% in the first four months of 2019 when coal’s share of the country’s energy mix fell by more than 5 percentage points to around 37%, although most of the slack was taken up by nuclear, rather than renewables. Nuclear energy, spurned in the wake of Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster, is set to fall by 2030 as older plants close.

South Korea operates some 60 coal power plants, mainly owned by state-run utilities, which last year supplied about 42% of the country’s electricity.

Over the next 15 years, the government had initially planned to retrofit some 20 of these with anti-pollution gear when they reached 30 years of age in a bid to extend their operating lifespan, but this has been shelved.

A “shared understanding” has emerged that “retrofitting is not that cost-worthy,” said Seok Kwang-hoon, a member of the government’s power supply plan working group and an adviser at civic group Green Korea.

However, the change comes even as seven new coal-fired plants are set for completion by 2022. Coal-fired capacity will rise in coming years before easing by 2030, suggesting the government will have to take further measures to reduce coal’s share of energy output.

To meet its targets, South Korea would have to cut coal’s contribution to its energy mix by 10 percentage points, or about a quarter, and replace it with more expensive gas, a government adviser told Reuters.

Funding such a sharp drop in coal would be extremely expensive, said the adviser, who asked not to be identified, adding that it “could hike electricity bills so it’s a challenge for us to work on.”

[Read more here]

My comments:

• The cut in coal is mostly due to air pollution rather than a need to cut CO₂ emissions.  Which is not to say cutting CO₂ emissions isn't wanted, just that horrendous air pollution has made the shift more urgent.  This is similar to the position in China.
• Whereas gas is half the price of coal in the USA, thanks to fracking, it is more expensive than coal in Asia.  
• Fukushima dealt a death blow to nuclear, everywhere.   
• South Korea has decent offshore wind resources in the SE of the country.  Wind is likely to be a big growth area. Solar resources are 25% better in the SE than in the rest of the country, where they are as good as most of the US outside its NE and SW.
• Because it takes so long to build a coal power station, coal hasn't peaked yet in Korea, but the writing is clearly on the wall.  Again, this echoes the position in China, India and Japan—the pipeline of coal power station projects has peaked.  Even some of the coal power station projects in the pipeline are likely to be cancelled, because of cost, air pollution worries, and global heating.  Global coal demand has only one way to go.