South Korea has ambitions to launch and propel its offshore wind market to multi-GW scale within the next decade.
The previous government set a target of 12 GW offshore wind by 2030. The market is therefore a high-potential, albeit uncertain market:
- South Korea has a strong need to diversify its energy mix to combat heavy dependence on imported fossil fuels. Offshore wind is a promising part of the solution: South Korea has a vast technical potential of 712 GW, with fixed-bottom and shallow floating offshore wind potential accounting for 92 %.
- Multiple domestic and international developers have obtained the initial license to develop projects theoretically totaling 21 GW. But long and uncertain permitting processes are main obstacles for the market, and only a few, smaller projects have so far gotten the all-clear.
- Major regulatory overhauls for offshore wind project site allocation and support have recently been indicated. While these could mean the end of the current open-door regime and more, there are no firm indication of when and how these initiatives would be carried out, or of whether this would impact the current open-door projects. The timeline for the many projects that aren’t yet fully permitted is therefore uncertain.
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