South Korea’s new offshore wind roadmap to enhance renewable energy efforts

The Offshore Wind Power Competitive Bidding Roadmap was recently announced by South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MOTIE).

The publication is part of the second phase of the South Korean government’s broader strategy to expand renewable energy, following measures to boost solar power generation.

The government plans to accelerate the growth of domestic wind power, projected to reach 18.3 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, by initiating competitive bidding for large-scale offshore wind projects.

The roadmap covers plans to open a bid market for commercial scale floating wind projects. The market is set to be opened this year alongside the existing bid market for fixed wind turbine orders.

Further, it sets out timings for competitive bidding from the fourth quarter (Q4) to the second quarter (Q2) of each year. This also includes the potential for additional tender announcements each year during Q4 if necessary. The government is aiming to launch between 7GW and 8GW of offshore wind power tenders during the next two years.

The roadmap also sets out plans to introduce a two-stage bid evaluation process. The first stage of this process will pay greater attention to non-price criteria including maintenance, security, and public works, increasing the score allotted to such criteria to 50 from its current 40. This step will select 120-150% of submitted bid quantity. The second stage includes price competition based on an evaluation of price attributes. The bidder with the highest score combined from rounds one and two will be selected as the winner.

The government has also proposed a target ratio on public sector participation in order to strengthen to role of the public sector. This plan is in line with the realigned renewable portfolio standards (RPS).

Peter Jang, an offshore wind expert at Pinsent Masons said: “The roadmap will help promote large-scale investment in offshore wind power generation both within and beyond South Korea, job creation, and the establishment of related infrastructure such as ports and ships by presenting stable offshore wind power bidding in advance.”

MOTIE is aiming to conduct a tender briefing in September this year, ahead of the release of a wind power tender for competitive bidding in October.