Shinan County and Assemblyman Sangjin Seo Hold Offshore Wind Power Policy Roundtable... Accelerating Resident Participation

County Proposes Integration into National Power Grid and Realistic Fixed-Price Auction Ceiling

Shinan County, part of the Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City, is ramping up policy alignment with the National Assembly to ensure stable progress of the world’s largest 8.2GW offshore wind power project. The county is speeding up the establishment of an institutional framework, including the integration of shared connection facilities into the national power grid and the expansion of local resident participation.

Assemblyman Seowangjin (center) visited Shinan County to inspect the renewable energy site. Provided by Shinan County

On August 18, Assemblyman Sangjin Seo, a member of the National Assembly’s Climate, Energy, Environment and Labor Committee, visited offshore and onshore wind farm sites and their supporting infrastructure in the region to inspect the progress of renewable energy industry initiatives and discuss potential policy support measures.

The delegation included Assemblyman Seo; Jincheol Kim, Executive Vice President of SK Innovation E&S and CEO of Jeonnam Offshore Wind Power; Jaegyeom Lim, CEO of Jaeun Residents' Wind; and officials from the Shinan County Renewable Energy Bureau.

Seo and his party first visited Shinan Green Energy in Jaeun-myeon, where they received a briefing on the progress of Jeonnam Offshore Wind Power and Jaeun Residents' Wind onshore projects in the Shinan area, followed by a tour of the power generation sites.

They then visited the Jeonnam Offshore Wind Power O&M (Operations and Maintenance) Center at Saengkim Port in Amtae-myeon, reviewing the operations and maintenance systems for the offshore wind farm and its supporting facilities.

After the site inspection, they held a policy roundtable with Shinan County Governor Taeseong Kim to focus on institutional improvements necessary for the timely start of large-scale offshore wind farms and the stable transmission of produced electricity.

At the meeting, Governor Kim emphasized that in order for the offshore wind power project to proceed as planned, it is essential to first establish transmission infrastructure that can reliably deliver produced electricity to mainland Korea, in addition to constructing the generation complexes themselves. He requested legislative and policy support from the National Assembly.

The key proposals included: ▲ Integration of shared connection facilities for offshore wind power into the "national power grid," ▲ Making the fixed-price auction ceiling for offshore wind power more realistic, and ▲ Amending RPS-related guidelines to broaden the scope of local resident participation in offshore wind projects.

In particular, strong recommendations were made to include the shared connection facilities within the national power grid to solve the critical transmission network issues that determine the success of large-scale offshore wind power projects.

The need for institutional improvements was also raised in order to reform the fixed-price auction system to enhance the economic viability of offshore wind power, and to expand resident participation models so that local communities can more broadly share in the benefits of these power generation projects.

Currently, Shinan County is advancing an offshore wind power project with a total capacity of 8.2GW. The county aims not only to establish power generation complexes but also to build an offshore wind industry ecosystem by connecting with related businesses, O&M services, and port and logistics facilities.

In particular, by expanding resident participation models, the county intends to ensure that the profits generated by offshore wind flow back to local residents, strengthening community returns, creating jobs, attracting population inflows, and thus fostering these initiatives as a new driving force for regional growth and countering depopulation.

The county plans to use this site visit and policy roundtable as an opportunity to further strengthen cooperation channels with the National Assembly, and to focus administrative efforts on addressing key institutional challenges in transmission networks, project viability, and resident participation as the offshore wind power project moves forward.

Shinan County Governor Taeseong Kim stated, "The Shinan offshore wind power project is a core future industry that will help overcome the crisis of rural depopulation and drive national carbon neutrality. We will continue to propose institutional improvements to the government and the National Assembly and work closely together to ensure that this large-scale power generation project can proceed smoothly and successfully."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.