Phase-out of Coal Power
A 9.8-megawatt solar power plant will be eventually built at the site of Dangjin Eco Power’s coal-fired power plant in South Chungcheong Province, ending a controversy over coal-power phase-out. This will mark the first time that a renewable energy facility will be constructed at a site set aside for a coal-fired power plant under the government's energy conversion policy.
"There are 30 coal-fired power plants in the South Chungcheong Province area. If we build another coal-fired power plant in the area, it will have a direct impact on air quality of the Seoul metropolitan area,” Baek Woon-kyu, minister of trade, industry and energy, told reporters after discussing anti-fine dust measures at the coal-fired power plant on May 23.
“Dangjin Eco Power’s Coal-fired Power Plant will be moved to Ulsan and Eumseong. We will build a solar power plant on the site instead,” Baek said. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy is planning to finalize its plan at an Electricity Committee meeting on May 24.
Initially, Korea East-West Power and SK Gas were pushing for the construction of two 580-MW coal-fired power plants in Dangjin through Dangjin Eco Power. This project was included in the 5th Basic Power Supply Plan in December 2010 and then received permission as a power generation project in July of the following year. In April of 2017, the Electric Power Source Development deliberated the project and stamped the project papers with the seals of approval. It is the Moon Jae-in government's coal-power phase-out policy that brought a halt to the project whose enforcement plant that would have been approved this year. The Moon Jae-in administration has announced that it will review a plan to build nine new coal-fired power plants from scratch as part of measures against fine dust after its inauguration.
However, controversy over the policy of de-coalification arose, cutting the number of coal-fired power plants to be cancelled from nine to four -- POSCO Energy's Samcheok Pospower 1 and 2 and Dangjin Eco Power 1 and 2. In December of last year, the eighth Electric Power Supply Plan was announced. The plan says that the government will build a coal-fired plant in Samcheok as originally planned and Dangjin Eco Power will be built as two 970 MW LNG-fired power plants in the above-mentioned new locations.