(Keynote) Recent Trend in New and Renewable Energy Generation in Korea and KIER’s R&D Activities
Authors: Lee Won-Yong 
Published: February 2020

In order to address climate change and to create new energy industries, Korea has been actively developing and deploying new and renewable energy (NRE) technologies. According to the second national basic plan for energy, 11% of total energy and 13.4% of total electric energy will be provided by NRE. 20% of NRE will be generated from wind power and 14% will be supplied by solar power plants. To promote the distribution of NRE, the Korean Government introduced subsidy programs and regulatory methods which include a FIT (feed-in-tariff) by 2011 and a RPS (renewable portfolio standard) from 2012, which forces major power companies to increase supply from NRE sources from 2% (at the beginning of 2012) to 10% of total power generation by 2022. After adopting the RPS, the deployment of NRE has increased dramatically. In April 2016, the total generation capacity of NRE was 9.2% of the total domestic electric generation, 102.5 GW. About half of this generation is from renewable energy resources. By the end of 2015, the installed capacities of PV, wind power and fuel cells were 2,537MW, 804.85MW, and 252MW, respectively. These figures are significantly larger from what they were under the FIT scheme in 2011: 554 MW, 405.345MW, and 50MW, respectively. During the same period, 2,200 units of residential fuel cell systems were installed under the green home program.

National policies have played an important role in RD&D of NRE. After enacting the ”Promotion Act for the Development of Alternative Energy” in 1987, the Korean Government has been pushing RD&D of NRE. PV, wind power and fuel cells were identified as 3 of the highest priority core technologies. The Korean Government newly announced the action plans to meet the policy objectives for addressing climate change, comprising 6 core technologies to be developed as national growth engines: PVs, fuel cells, ESS, biofuels, power IT, and CCS technologies. Those technologies will contribute to create new energy markets, such as eco-friendly towns, self-sufficient islands, and zero energy buildings.

To meet the objectives of national energy plans by improving and expanding advanced energy technologies, KIER has established 6 major R&D areas: including distributed generation through new and renewable energy, energy networks, and next generation batteries. As clean distributed generation technologies, KIER has been developing 50 to 100 μm ultra-thin silicon solar cells (KUT cell), 25% efficient CIGS thin-film solar cells, and hydrogen fuel cell technologies. KIER developed fuel cell-battery hybrid vehicles and residential fuel cell systems. KIER is trying to develop the core technologies for off-shore wind farms at Jeju’s global research center, where convergence R&D is being conducted for carbon-free islands on areas such as marine bio-energy, salinity gradient power, and floating off-shore wind power. To promote NRE distribution, KIER has been developing micro energy grid technologies and various energy storage systems, such as large capacity redox flow batteries, supercapacitors, and Li-S batteries.

For about 20 years, KIER has been developing and demonstrating near zero energy building technologies using passive and active solar design. In 2009, through the test of the second model of low energy houses, 85% of total energy savings, including electric and thermal energy, was achieved. In 2013, KIER successfully applied the technology to 29 actual homes. From 2014, KIER has been designing an eco-friendly energy town at the Innovation City in Chungbuk Province as one of 3 Korean Government-sponsored demonstration projects. The government wanted to solve not only energy and environment problems, but also NIMBY problems to change NIMBY facilities to eco-friendly generation facilities using renewable energy technologies. One of the projects is to build an eco-friendly campus at a sewage treatment facility near a small town using renewable energy hybrid systems, such as solar thermal systems with seasonal energy storage systems, PVs, and fuel cells.

The advanced energy technologies developed by KIER will contribute to Korea’s national policy of expanding renewable energy technologies to 11% of primary energy consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 37%.