Recent Status of New and Renewable Energy in Korea

초록

As the oil price increases, alternative energy becomes interesting issue in the world. After the Oil Crisis, alternative energy development was temporarily boomed. However, it has been stagnant for a while because the oil price has been low. Recently, Government and Energy Authority intend to redevelop the alternative energy technologies according to the rise in oil price. There is strong functional relationship between oil price and the alternative energy development. In 1998, the ratio of alternative energy utilization to total energy usage in Korea was just about 1%(waste incineration, small hydrostatic, solar heat and wind power were applied). The major problem to utilize the alternative energy is that the initial cost is very expensive compared to that of the fossil fuel. In case of solar heating system, it takes 6∼7 years to retrieve the initial installation cost. As the oil price increase, it causes the promoting effect of alternative energy development. It is prospected that usage of alternative energy will increase up to 2 or 3 % out of the total energy in the next 10 years. Utilization of alternative energies should be promoted continuously by all of us for our future.