SK Ecoplant joins 2.6GW offshore wind power project in Korea

South Korea’s SK Ecoplant Co. signed an agreement on Monday to jointly develop a combined 2.6 gigawatt (GW) offshore wind power project in Korea with Corio Generation, a wind power developer within Green Investment Group under Macquarie Asset Management, and French multinational energy firm TotalEnergies SE.         

The SK Group’s construction arm said on Tuesday it will acquire a certain stake in the offshore wind power development project platform, which is owned by Corio and TotalEnergies.

The platform will construct floating and fixed-bottom offshore wind turbines in five areas off the southern coast of Korea, including Ulsan and South Jeolla Province. 

All five locations are well placed as sites for construction and the transmission and distribution of electricity offering a wind speed of eight meters per second (m/s) or faster, SK Ecoplant said.

The project includes the development of the 1.5 gigawatt Gray Whale Offshore Wind Power farm, expected to be the world’s largest floating offshore wind power plant.     

Four of the five construction plans have already earned their power generation business licenses from the Korean government, SK Ecoplant added.     

The Korean construction company will participate in the project from the early stage of business development to construction and operation. It aims to start building the power plants in 2024 and begin commercial operations in 2027.    

SK Ecoplant has solidified fundamentals to become a major player in the global offshore wind power industry via the joint development project, said the firm’s CEO Park Kyung-il.

The company differentiates itself by creating and completing value chains in all the wind power development processes via business partnerships and M&As, SK Ecoplant said. It is planning to expand the construction of green energy plants to embrace RE100, a multinational initiative to make the full switch to renewables by 2050.

Write to Jong-Pil Park at jp@hankyung.com
Jihyun Kim edited this article.