South Korea to spend $40 billion on world’s biggest floating wind farm

Source: James Fernyhough · RENEW ECONOMY · | May 10, 2021

Source: Renew Economy

Just three months after the South Korean government announced it was building the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, it has now announced a new ambition: to build the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm.

According to reports in Hong Kong newspaper The South China Morning Post, the new wind farm will cost $US32 billion ($A40 billion) with a generation capacity of 6 gigawatts. That’s about three times the capacity of Australia’s largest coal plants.

It adds to the 8 gigawatts of wind capacity announced in February. While that wind farm is planned for South Korea’s south west coast, the latest project will be off the coast of the industrial city of Ulsan in the south east of the country.

President Moon Jae-in said the project would be funded by a mixture of public and private finance. He said it would generate enough electricity to power 5.7 million homes and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 9 million tonnes a year.

“Sea winds are like carbonless petroleum in the 21st century. Large scale offshore wind farms will bring us a short cut to achieve carbon neutral and provide us with new growth engines,” the SCMP quoted Moon as saying.

Floating offshore wind remains by far the rarest and most expensive form of wind power. However, recent projects including the Hywind project off the coast of Scotland and the Windfloat project off the coast of Portugal show it can be done. A recent report in academic journal Nature Energy predicts floating solar could make up a quarter of all offshore developments by 2035.