Denmark renews cooperation with South Korea on offshore wind development

Denmark will contribute with knowledge and experience to fulfill South Korea’s ambitions to expand offshore wind power.
Photo: Hannah Aurora Almstrup
Photo: Hannah Aurora Almstrup
AF RITZAU

On Friday, Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities Lars Aagaard renewed the country’s energy cooperation with South Korea.

South Korea has an ambition to install 14.3 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030. With knowledge, experience and solutions in the offshore wind area, Denmark will help to achieve this.

”At the end of 2022, South Korea had a total of just over 1.6 GW of installed wind capacity, the vast majority of which is onshore wind. They don’t have a lot of experience in developing offshore wind, which is something we have in Denmark,” Lars Aagaard said.

He explains that the countries share experiences on tendering processes, grid planning and how to get large amounts of renewable energy into the electricity system.

The collaboration also goes the other way, with South Korea helping Denmark with hydrogen production.

”Today, South Korea has a relatively large hydrogen production, and this is also something we need to build up in Denmark. This means that we have some experience in the offshore wind area, and South Korea has some experience with hydrogen production.”

In this way, according to the minister, it is a really good collaboration, because knowledge goes both ways.

In 2011, Denmark and South Korea established ”The Green Growth Alliance”, which has helped position Denmark and Danish companies in South Korea’s green transition.

This week, Danish companies within offshore wind and other green technologies have also been in South Korea together with the Confederation of Danish Industry in connection with the renewal of the cooperation.

Lars Aagaard explains that Danish companies are the developers behind just over 6.2 GW of the 14.3 GW of offshore wind in the pipeline.

”CIP (Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, ed.) and Ørsted are the two biggest down here in South Korea. Vestas has set up headquarters here in South Korea, which of course draws a number of other Danish companies down here.”

He explains that the collaboration is gradually moving away from ”powerpoint talks” to concrete investments.

The climate minister does not have a concrete figure for how much money is allocated to support the collaboration.

It’s more about manpower, he says.

”It’s manpower that we make available. We have experts who can build the connections between the companies back home in Denmark.”

”We also have a couple of employees who work for the Danish Energy Agency at the embassy. And then, of course, the experts at the Danish Energy Agency who are in dialog with the Korean experts,” says Lars Aagaard.

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