Seoul, South Korea’s largest city, is shifting to green energy in a big way following a big public campaign pressuring the government to do so.
As a result, every public building and an additional one million residential homes will receive rooftop solar panels by 2022. Additionally, there is a solar-panel rental scheme offering cheaper rates for the technology in place for residents not already receiving panels. Cumulatively, the city’s administration expects these solar panels to reduce CO2 emissions by more than half a million metric tons.
South Korea is Asia’s fourth-largest economy and owns one of the most developed technology sectors in the region. Despite this, it has long relied heavily on nuclear energy and fossil fuels such as coal and gas for power.
Poor air and water quality in recent years has encouraged a public campaign to move away from these dirty energy sources and towards renewable energy. As a result, the country is now aiming to triple its renewable energy capacity over the coming decade.
This new focus on green energy has also resulted in changes to previous energy plans, such as retrofitting a third of its coal plants with anti-emission equipment when they reached 30 years of age. This plan has now been abandoned due to a lack of cost-effectiveness and the government’s aims to generate 35% of its electricity from renewables by 2040.
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Positive Environment News has been compiled using publicly available information. Planet Ark does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the original information and encourages readers to check the references before using this information for their own purposes.