Friday, February 06, 2004
ASIA FILE
A new wave for Korean energy
Barun Roy
Wido is a tiny island off South Korea's western coast, inhabited by no more than 1,400 people, mostly engaged in fishing; and Buan, the county to which it belongs, is a 3,968-hectare scenic wonderland on the peninsula sought for its beauty and serenity.
For the last seven months, though, this peaceful corner of Korea has been rocked by protests and violence in a display of people power that has shaken up the national government.
For 17 years, Seoul has been looking for a site where the waste from its 17 nuclear power plants could be permanently stored. When the Buan county government eventually volunteered to host such a dump and offered the island of Wido, 14 km offshore, Seoul thought its trouble was over. In fact, it was just beginning.
Ever since the government announced last July that Wido would be the dumpsite, the people of Buan have been up in arms. They are marching, picketing, demonstrating and fighting battles with the police that have often been more than hit-and-run. In these months, their resolve hasn't wilted a bit. They simply don't want a hazardous dump in their backyard. With organised unions now having joined the fray on the side of the protesters, the government is clearly on the defensive. It still wants to try and persuade the people that the dump would be safe, but knows it's a lost battle.
In fact, people doubt if the government can find a permanent dumpsite at all after this, or if it would be easy in future to even build new nuclear power plants.
The Buan resistance hangs like a big question mark over a country that already gets 40 per cent of its energy from nuclear generation and would like to get more so that it can reduce its almost-total dependence on oil from west Asia.
Its energy bill last year reached an estimated $ 38 billion, accounting for almost 24 per cent of its total annual imports. It's a burden the government would do anything to lighten.
But the dumpsite face-off has thrown its calculations awry and suddenly everybody has started taking a renewed interest in alternative energy. A Korean-funded hybrid wind and solar energy project in Mongolia, completed last October and providing power to a remote village in the eastern Gobi desert, which is about four hours by helicopter from Ulaan Baataar, is being played up as the way to go.
"The Buan crisis proves that Korea needs an energy source that is safe and practical, one that is easy to build and manage and that meets the public's approval," says Kim Young-hoon, chairman of Daesung Group Global Energy Network, the government's private sector partner in the Mongolian project. At the moment, Korea gets only 1.4 per cent of its energy need from renewable sources. The government intends to raise the proportion to at least 5 per cent by 2011 and will spend 9.1 trillion won in the next seven years to reach the target.
Its determination was already evident last year when $ 72.6 million was spent on alternative energy development, which was 21 per cent more than what it spent in the year before.
The government is also asking citizen groups to get together to set up solar power plants and has offered to buy their excess electricity at a premium. Interest in such projects has grown since a solar plant, funded by a group of 35 individuals, went into operation in Seoul last year.
At the same time, the government is pushing to establish model "green" villages, where at least 50 households in each village will be equipped with renewable power generating facilities.
Due attention is also being paid on developing the technology to tap energy from its oceans. Like wind and sunlight, this resource, too, is endless and experts say ocean conditions around the Korean peninsula are such that all three ocean-energy inputs - tides, waves and currents - could be easily exploited.
The ministry of maritime affairs and fisheries has announced plans to build two tidal power plants in the Shiwha Lake area and in Karorim Bay on the west coast and hopes to generate 720,000 kWh of electricity between the two plants by 2008.
Three years ago, a Russian-born American hydro-energy expert, Alexander Gorlov, was invited by the Korean National Assembly's Environmental Forum to do a feasibility study. Gorlov has invented a technology that uses helical turbines to convert seawater into electricity and hydrogen energy, and told the Koreans that, literally, hundreds of plants could be established around the country.
Some Korean researchers also see a future in a system that combines wave and wind turbines using the same rotary shaft mounted on a buoy.
According to Shim Hyun Jin of Baek Jai Engineering of Seoul, the system will work even in low-energy waters, while studies have shown that, deployed under appropriate sea conditions, it might be competitive with other electricity-generating technologies.
Business Standard Ltd.