South Korea mandates car-park solar panels

 From Electrek

Starting this month, parking lots in South Korea with more than 80 spaces will be required to install solar canopies and carports. But, unlike similar laws that have been proposed in the US, this new law doesn’t just apply to new construction – existing lots will have to comply as well!

South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced in August that it has prepared an amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the Act on the Promotion of the Development, Use, and Diffusion of New and Renewable Energy to the effect that all publicly- and privately-owned parking lots in the Asian country with room for more than 80 vehicles will be compelled to add solar panels to their lots in a move designed to proactively expand renewable energy and create more solar and construction jobs.

In addition to creating jobs and working to stabilize the local grid with more renewable energy, the proposed solar canopies will offer a number of practical, day-to-day benefits for Korean drivers, as well.

The shaded structures will protect vehicles from heavy rain, snow, and the blistering summer sun — keeping interiors cooler, extending the life of plastics and upholstery, and even helping to preserve battery range in EVs and PHEVs by reducing their AC loads (and, of course, provide charging while the cars are parked).

To their credit, Ministry officials absolutely get it. “Through this mandatory installation,” one unnamed official told Asia Business Daily, “we expect to expand the distribution of eco-friendly renewable energy generation facilities while providing tangible benefits to the public. By utilizing idle land such as parking lots, we can maximize land use efficiency. In addition, installing canopy-type solar panels can provide shade underneath, offering noticeable comfort to people using parking lots during hot weather.”

The new rule was approved in late September, and is expected to go into effect later this month, with new installation projects set to begin immediately.

France did this a couple of years ago. 

It's not just lockdown

There's been no lockdown in South Korea.  As a result of their test--trace--contact policy, there have been very few deaths.  Yet business and consumer confidence have plunged over the last couple of months, to levels not seen since the GFC.  The reason?  Because no man is an island.  Korea depends on exports to the rest of the world.  Every country, every business, every consumer depends on the economy and economies around them.  The point is that even when an individual country emerges from lockdown, it does not mean that the economy will miraculously recover.  Recovery in Korea will depend on recovery in the world.  And that's true to some extend for most economies.   The US is perhaps an exception, so the US is key to the world recovery.  But the US is very unlikely to recover quickly from this crash.  The damage in the form of lost jobs, bankrupted businesses, falling house prices, and rolling coronavirus re-infections will last many months.

New cases peaking in lockdown countries

A chart from the Guardian:

However, even though they're clearly peaking in Italy and Spain, and prolly close to peaking in Germany and France, the rate at which new cases is declining is not nearly as fast as in Korea or China.  However, it took nearly 4 weeks after total lockdown for cases to plunge in China, so they may yet do the same in Europe countries.

The USA is outstandingly bad.   The only way to slow new cases there would be by a total lockdown and extensive testing and isolation, and the administration clearly will not do the former and is too inept to organise the latter.  Assuming a doubling every 3 days, we could be looking at 100,000 new cases a day within a week.  Given how expensive the US health system is, and how poor people are closed out of it, it's hard not to see the death rate rising even faster.

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. 

Dotard in charge

A cartoon from Jim Morin

The handshake

From the incomparable Cathy Wilcox

Only one way to deal with North Korea

Another Peter Broelman classic. Perfect.

South Korea to close coal power stations

Seoul’s Namsan Tower is blanketed in thick smoke (Source: Korea Herald)

They're not doing it because of global warming:

South Korea’s environmental authorities on Tuesday unveiled a package of measures to tackle the worsening air pollution, including shutting down aged coal power plants and reducing pollutants from diesel vehicles and factories. 

The measures are aimed at helping reduce fine dust emissions by more than 30 percent by the end of President Moon Jae-in’s term in 2022, authorities said. 

Last year alone, the country’s dust levels were above 50 micrograms per cubic meter for 248 days. With the new package of measures, the government hopes to reduce the hazardous days to 78 days by 2022.  

The World Health Organization classified the fine particulates as first-degree carcinogens, which can penetrate into the respiratory system and trigger fatal illnesses like cancer. 

In the face of hazardous smog, cities and provinces have installed indoor sports facilities at schools and provided care centers for the elderly.

[read more here]

You have to ignore a lot of bad news to be optimistic about coal.  It's filthy to mine, filthy to burn, kills people, causes global warming, and is more expensive than most alternatives. And demand has been falling for three years.  The decline will continue.