국내 해상풍력 발전사업 관련 재생에너지 법제와 정부정책

Abstract

This article aims to broadly overview Korean offshore wind power market, related renewable laws & regulations and government policy in light of numerous global wind power players’ entrance into Korean market. Pursuant to the previous Korean government’s initiative regarding development of offshore wind power, the government rendered its ambitious plan to build up a tremendous volume of offshore wind power capacity equal to 12GW by the year of 2030, the plan of which was consistent with the government’s anti-nuclear power policy. Although the new government attempts to abolish the anti-nuclear power policy, however, since Korea also has to attain the goal of carbon zero until the year of 2050, it seems the current offshore wind power projects will continue to be progressed. In light of the situation addressed above, it is worth considering what current Korean renewable laws and regulations are, there are any flaw therein, and there are any problem in the government’s related policies. This article broadly examines Korean energy and renewable energy laws and regulations. Key concepts therein are renewable portfolio standard(RPS) and renewable energy certificate(REC) so that these concepts and their mechanism will be analyzed in depth. Further, offshore wind power developers will receive REC and has to resell, for maximization of their profits, the awarded REC to any obligor wanting REC under RPS system. Thus, this article covers how such transaction is to be made between the developers and the obligors. This article further explains not only what the current status of offshore wind power projects are in Korea, but how the government’s related policies have been developed. Korean government issued ‘renewable 3020 implementation plan’ in 2017 and ‘specific development plan for offshore wind power’ in 2020, respectively. In addition, Korean government prepared a bill so named as ‘one-stop shot’ legislative draft which was submitted to the Congress in 2020 as well. One of the biggest hurdles in developing offshore wind power project is to obtain statutory consent from affected local people. This article summarizes several ways of obtaining such consent. Another biggest hurdle is to obtain various approvals from central and local governments, which are very complex and takes very long time period. The above ‘one-stop shot’ draft is designed to resolve the problem in the approval process. Lastly, this article examines other problems, such as government’s unilateral order for curtailment of power to be produced and shortage of grid system to cover numerous offshore wind power projects which are currently developed.