South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has announced plans to build the world’s biggest offshore wind farm with an unprecedented capacity of 8200MW.
Moon attended a signing ceremony in the southwestern coastal town of Sinan, where the project is expected to be based.
According to Reuters, he unveiled the 48.5trn won (€36.05bn) plan to build the project by 2030 as part of efforts to promote a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project forms a major component of President Moon Jae-in’s Green New Deal, introduced last year to curb reliance on fossil fuels in Asia’s fourth-largest economy and make it carbon neutral by 2050.
Moon said: “With this project, we are accelerating the eco-friendly energy transition and moving more vigorously toward carbon neutrality.”
Korea Electric Power Corp, SK E&S, Hanwha Engineering & Construction Corp, Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction, CS Wind Corp and Samkang M&T will provide 47.6trn won of the required funding and the government the remaining 0.9trn, Moon’s office Blue House told the news agency.
It said the project would provide up to 5,600 jobs and help achieve a goal to boost the country’s wind power capacity to 16.5GW by 2030 from 1.6 GW now.
Currently, the world’s largest offshore wind farm is Hornsea 1 in the UK, which has 1.12GW capacity.