President Park Hyung koo of Korea Midland Power Co. (KOMIPO) holds the 22nd Global Energy Award trophy. KOMIPO was honored with winning the award as KOMIPO’s Seoul Power Complex with the world’s largest underground power generation capacity was designed as the Construction Project of the Year by S&P Global Platts at an on-line awards ceremony of the 22nd Global Energy Awards last Dec. 11. (Photo: KOMIPO)

Korea Midland Power Co. (KOMIPO) is reducing its dependence on coal-fired power and expanding renewable energy generation, in keeping with a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and the government’s energy paradigm shift.

The following is the gist of President Park Hyung koo’s New Year’s message, delivered on Jan. 4.

“We have to achieve a goal raising the portion of new/renewable energy power generation to 30 percent by 2030, and aggressively explore digital New Deal projects by spreading application-oriented technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution,” he said.

“I have mixed feelings and emotions as I’m delivering my New Year address virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which dominated our daily life during last year. I hope that hearing the news on the development of vaccines and treatment drugs, the pandemic will come to an end quicker, and I will come back to our normal life and take much time to communicate with our staff, which has been refrained so far,” President Park said.

Park said, “The year 2020 had a difficult situation in which functions could not be performed by the conventional method due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but each department had managed to prevent a work vacuum by developing non-face-to-face work as soon as possible.”

“It has proven once again that KOMIPO staff has a potential to transfer a crisis into an opportunity, and seizing this opportunity, I extend heart-felt thanks to all staff members who have done their best in their place,” he said.

“The government announced a comprehensive Korean New Deal plan to lead the global economy last July and declared “2050 Korea Carbon Neutrality Vision” designed to cope with climate change last December. The announcement of these two policies will tell our company on how energy policies will be implemented down the road.”

“We also ought to mobilize all our capabilities to achieve tasks, mandatory as a public entity, such as reducing air pollution emissions, localizing power generation facilities and creating jobs to the extent people can sense, and it is necessary for us to always fulfill fundamentals and be armed with an innovative mindset to cope with these demands of the times and changing management environment,” he said.

“I want to present a few tasks to make KIMIPO a leader of clean energy raising the value of life,” he noted.

First, he said, “I call for your utmost to spread awareness toward safety, establish it and brace for a carbon neutrality era.” “Our company’s safety regulations and systems are set as the highest levels and operated, but KOMIPO and its cooperative companies should build and settle human-oriented, integrated disaster safety management so as to prevent the occurrence of a single safety accident, and producing quality and stable power is our company’s basic responsibility,” he said.

“We have to make every effort to reduce fine dust and air pollution emissions to brace for a carbon neutrality era, and KOMIPO should aggressively expand investment into environment facilities to levels surpassing government guidelines and give an image of attaching top priority on people’s safety and health by disclosing information in a transparent fashion.”

Second, he urged his executives and staff members to mobilize all resources to cope with environmental changes through endless innovation and create future growth engines.

“Whether our company will secure a sustainable growth will surely hinge on how successful we achieve energy paradigm shift and how will we make preparations for core future technology development and commercialization, and with the phasing out of coal-fired power, new LNG combed cycle power projects on top of new/renewal energy projects will be two pillars to buttress our company’s sustainable growth.”

“Besides, if we continue to develop and strengthen our overseas development capabilities, which are our strengths, and we make the whole of the world, beyond Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe our overseas renewable business turf,” he said.

Third, he called for spearheading realization of social values to become a company trusted by the people.

Lastly, President Park urged his executives and staff to translate shared growth into action.

“Let’s join forces with each other without fearing challenges, and make every effort to establish ourself as a clean energy leader enhancing the values of life,” he said.