A view of Korea District Heating Corp. (KDHC) headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do.

President Hwang Chang-hwa of Korea District Heating Corp. (Photos: KDHC)

Sejong branch of Korea District Heating Corp. (KDHC) has become the first organization in the steam business sector to receive an integrated environment management permit from the Ministry of Environment (MOE).

KDHC’s winning of the permit has allowed the corporation to take a first step toward integrated environment management. KDHC plans to have 16 branches and 21 site businesses out of the total 18 branches and 27 site operations across the nation certified with integrated environment permits by the end of this year.

The Integrated environment permit system is designed to unify 10 different permits that had been issued in accordance with six laws related to environment pollution facilities into one. The integrated environment management system shifts into a permit system designed to reflect characteristics of each business and conditions of each site, departing from the conventional permits varying types of pollutants.

KDHC, classified into the heat business sector, is required to obtain integrated environment management permits by the end of 2020. In order to ensure a swift shift into an integrated environment management system, the corporation plans to have 20 site businesses certified with integrated environment management permits by the end of this year.

With KDHC’s winning of the integrated environment management permit, the corporation plans to ram up the monitoring of environment pollutants and ensure environment management of site businesses by applying the Best Available Techniques (BAT), designed to reduce pollutant emissions in the most effective fashion.

Speaking in detail, liquid fuel-fired combined cycle power facilities in Daegu and Cheongju branches are to be diverted into LNG-fired ones, while those in Central Branch will have low nitrogen dioxide burners replaced. Details of the projects will be determined after obtaining integrated environment management permits.

KDHC President Hwang Chang-hwa said, “Our corporation plans to invest 772.4 billion won to comply with the government’s steps to curb fine dust, reducing super fine dust by 37 percent compared to 2018 levels.” KDHC devotes itself to complying with steps to reduce air pollutants and fine dust as an eco-friendly energy public entity down the road, he added.

KDHC Spearheads Development of Community Energy New Technologies

KDHC, a global community energy leader, is spearheading the future energy industry by aggressively playing a part as a R&D leader which devotes itself of developing and verifying new community energy technologies.

The corporation is implementing a project to develop and conduct test-bed of a next-generqito9n district heating and cooling platform. A task on the development of an IoT convergence city heat network model connected with unused heat and district heat is jointly conducted by Korea District Heating Engineering Co., Korea Institute of Energy Research, and the industry-campus-research team of Gachun University.