KEPCO Developing Breakthrough Carbon Neutrality Technologies

Kim Sook-cheol, head of the technology innovation headquarters at Korea Electric Power Corp., Jun Dae-wook, head of the planning headquarters at Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and Choi Yong-beom, head of the technology safety headquarters at Korea West Power pose at a ceremony to dedicate a facility to verify recovery and purification technology of SF6 in use for electrical equipment at KEPCO Research Institute on Sept. 1.

Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) is stepping on the gas to develop proprietary breakthrough technologies to achieve carbon neutrality.

The power company wants to develop next-generation core technologies in 10 sectors, including hydrogen energy, photovoltaic power and power semiconductors.

The research period will be five years, in consideration of propriety basic technologies and exploring outcomes.

KEPCO plans to build a foundation to develop breakthrough technologies to achieve carbon neutrality through aggressive investments.

To this end, an R&D planning committee with 10 subcommittees and 112 members, including 24 KEPCO officials, has been inaugurated.

Outside members of the committee have been appointed in a public contest. Twenty-seven universities, eight research institutes and four companies are participating in the committee.

According to business sources, KEPCO has already confirmed proprietary, breakthrough technologies designed to achieve carbon neutrality in the energy transition sector. The power company is actualizing the research on the tasks.

KEPCO is shifting into an open R&D regime, combining its R&D resources and industry-academia-research capabilities, a departure from the conventional method based on its own capabilities.

A KEPCO official said, “The development of innovative technologies is necessary to successfully bring about future changes for achieving carbon neutrality, and to this end, exploring of innovative materials, securing a stable supply, raising economic feasibility and solving lots of other challenging technology conundrums need to be solved.”

The project involves 10 sectors - insufficient carbon neutrality core technology foundation in Korea, power semiconductors, photovoltaic power, hydrogen production, storage and utilization, considered to have a greater impact of dramatically raising performances and economic spill-over effects.

They are power semiconductors, photovoltaic power, hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, hydrogen utilization, carbon capture, usage and storage technology (CCUS), energy storage systems (ESS), intelligent grids and supply efficiency and consumption efficiency.

KEPCO’s Technology Division had established a master plan of the project in February.

The R&D Planning Committee has explored a total of 13 tasks through meetings of 10 subcommittees from March and June.

The tasks include power semiconductor materials and equipment for 10kV-class grids.

Multi-junction, thin-film solar cells use flexible substrates, and water electrolysis use anion exchange membranes.

A view of KEPCO headquarters in Naju, Jeollanam-do. (Photos: KEPCO)