December 4, 2024
South Korea’s reduction path to carbon neutrality is a crucial aspect of the global energy transition, yet there are complex challenges.
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South Korea is a densely populated country, with energy-intensive industries such as the manufacture of semi conductors, steel, ships and batteries. It is heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels, with limited available land and sunlight availability for large-scale solar farms. The country is ranked 9th in the world for CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, generating 575 million metric tons of CO2 in 2023. Compared with other industrialised nations such as Canada, Germany and UK (which have seen declining emissions since the 1960s – see diagram), South Korea underwent rapid economic growth over the past few decades, with emissions rising heavily in line with this - emissions have only started falling in 2018. South Korea’s reduction path to carbon neutrality is a crucial aspect of the global energy transition, yet there are complex challenges ahead to achieve this goal.
This is the South Korean government’s long-term roadmap for electricity supply. It addresses the plan for power generation facilities, and contains forecasts of expected electricity demand, supply mix, back-up and reserve power capacity etc. It focuses on shifting the power mix to prioritise the stability of power supply (decreasing demand on imported energy), the efficiency of conversion (balancing decarbonisation costs with economic growth), and the acceleration to carbon neutrality. It provides a basis for power plant construction planning, especially to government owned companies. All stats and forecasts in this Plan look ahead to 2038.
- The anticipated maximum power demand in South Korea is set to be 129.3 GW (the all-time current historical record is 97.4 GW, which was set on Aug 20, 2024, during a heat wave).
- The Plan proposes increasing the proportion of carbon-free energy sources in the national energy mix to 70%, including tripling solar and wind capacity to 115.GW, with which the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix will increase from 8% in 2022 to 29 % in 2038.
- 36.5GW of operational nuclear power plants by 2038, increasing current capacity up to 4.9GW by building three large-scale nuclear power plants, and one SMR, which will advance the nuclear share in the electricity energy mix from 29.6% to 35.6%.
- Aging coal plants will be converted to Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), pumped storage hydro, hydrogen power plants or ammonia/hydrogen co-firing, reducing coal’s share in the energy mix from 24% to 10.3%.
- The complete phase-out of coal-fired power generation is proposed by 2050 in South Korea’s Carbon Neutrality Act, although there is currently no government mechanism to convert coal-fired power plants with SMR technology. SMRs would be one of the best routes to Repowering, which succeeds from an economic perspective, by the reuse of existing grid connections and through the protection of local jobs, but this is yet to be discussed.
These Plan targets rely on securing investments and passing legislation, and there are other issues such as stalled bills on offshore wind development. There are also challenges around cost concerns of carbon-free energies, public acceptance of nuclear energy, and grid congestion. South Korea’s grid would need to be increased by seven times its current levels to accommodate all the projected renewables that would come online under this Plan.
One of the most promising decarbonisation technologies showcased at the summit was Korea’s i-SMR™ (Innovative Small ModularReactor).
- The i-SMR™ is a 170 Mwe integrated pressurised water nuclear reactor, which is compact in size, and offers load-following capabilities to mitigate intermittency of renewable grid loading.
- Enhanced safety systems include an integrated reactor, a passive safety cooling system, a steel containment vessel and physical separation of cooling tanks.
- Beyond electricity generation, this SMR can replace aged coal-fired power plants with a decentralised power source, and the heat can also aid in hydrogen production, process heat, district heat, desalination etc
- Cost-efficient with a construction cost of ≤$3,500 per kWe, and levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of ≤$65/MWh.
- Modularisation of the reactor and mechanical systems allows for a significant reduction of site work and construction time, with an installation of 24 months, which is much faster than large reactors (6-8 years construction time).
- First Of a Kind (FOAK) construction of these reactors is scheduled for the 2030s.
The development of the i-SMR™ has been a collaboration between a government agency and industry, with the project managed and funded by the government, remaining on budget and schedule. As ‘homegrown’ technology, it is significantly cheaper than equivalent nuclear options other countries.
SMRs such as this would be the best option to replace coal in a Repowering project. Existing South Korean regulations currently prohibit this crossover of coal and nuclear in their 6 utility companies, and there are also negative public perceptions of nuclear energy which need to be overcome. If Repowering could be successfully demonstrated in South Korea’s private sector, this may motivate the government to change the current set-up.
- South Korea aims to achieve 700TWh of electricity generation by 2038 (an increase of 16.67% from current levels of 600TWh). This is a drastic societal shift and will require regulatory advancement, massive grid expansion and technological innovation.
- The expectation of using hydrogen for power generation and industrial applications looks promising, although building all the relevant infrastructure is not simple, and there are no tangible plans in South Korea to produce hydrogen at this scale – it would need to be imported, or be produced from a clean energy source such as a high temperature gas-cooled reactor.
- Excellent progress has been made in South Korea’s Energy Storage technologies, including in the development of Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES), which stores energy through the air-liquefaction process.
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