The government of South Korea has announced that it will provide full support to the floating wind farm being planned off the coast of Ulsan. The project is expected have an installed capacity of 6 GW and be completed by 2030. This capacity is expected to power as many as 5.7 million households. It will also help avoid close to 9.3 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. The area where the project is planned used to be a natural gas field in the East Sea.
About 36 trillion won, which is equivalent to about $32 billion, would be invested through government-private partnerships into the project to create the facilities. In the first stage, the public and the private sectors plan to invest 1.4 trillion won in the project by 2025. The government has asked several participants such as Ulsan city authorities, related government ministries, domestic and foreign firms, research institutes and colleges to help make the project a success.
In February 2021, South Korea had presented plans for an offshore wind farm off the coast of the south-western city of Sinan with a maximum capacity of 8.2 GW, seven times the capacity of the current largest wind farms. Unlike Sinan, the farm in Ulsan will be using floating turbines due to the great water depth. They will not be anchored in the ground but be attached to buoys. These projects are expected to help South Korea reach its carbon neutrality target by 2050.
In December 2020, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with OW Offshore, a Spanish offshore wind power company, and Kumyang, a Korea renewable energy company to develop a giant floating offshore wind power generation complex off the coast of Ulsan. As per the agreement, OW Offshore will develop three 500MW complexes with a combined total capacity of 1.5 GW in Korea’s exclusive economic zone off Ulsan.