A Future Vision for a Carbon-Zero (CFE) Advanced Industrial City Beginning in Gochang

Now that the climate crisis has emerged as a global challenge, the energy transition is no longer a choice but a matter of survival. Countries around the world are mobilizing a wide range of policies and technologies to achieve carbon neutrality, and among them, decarbonizing the energy sector has become a core task. Along with the need to overcome regional extinction in Gochang County, I propose a “Korean Carbon-Free Energy Cluster” as a strategy for industrial advancement. This project symbolizes a transition beyond the simple expansion of renewable energy to a Carbon-Free Energy (CFE) system that includes nuclear power and hydrogen.

The existing RE100 initiative is a movement to supply 100% of the electricity needed for all business activities with renewable energy. However, it has clear practical limitations due to intermittency, high costs, and reduced efficiency. By contrast, CF100 (Carbon Free 100) includes a variety of carbon-free energy sources such as nuclear power, hydrogen, and CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage). It is particularly noteworthy that global companies such as Google and Microsoft are shifting to a CF100 system with the goal of using 24/7 carbon-free energy.

Gochang County is the ideal location for precisely this CF100 vision. In Sangha-myeon, there is the southwest coast offshore wind power project (currently 60MW, to be expanded in stages to 2.46GW), and nearby across the border in Hongnong-eup, Yeonggwang, there is the Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant (5.9GW). If large-scale agrivoltaic solar facilities are additionally installed in the Goripo reclaimed land (salt-damaged farmland) in the future, the area would have the locational conditions to establish a practical carbon-free energy supply base through a diverse CFE mix.

The core of the Gochang-style Korean Carbon-Free Energy Cluster does not stop at energy production alone. Gochang County is also home to KEPCO’s Gochang Power Testing Center, the largest power demonstration testing site in Korea and a core infrastructure asset of the country’s electric power industry, giving it another pillar for fostering a power industry cluster.

Based on this energy production foundation and power demonstration facilities, the time has come to realize the vision of a Korean Carbon-Free Energy Cluster by creating a national industrial complex centered on the CFE power industry (transmission, transformation, distribution, and secondary batteries) and attracting a Smart Power Testing Research Institute. In particular, it is time to flesh out key tools for attracting businesses through PPAs (power purchase agreements) targeting global firms that prefer RE100, the provision of low electricity rates, and a resident-participation “sunlight pension” model.

If this strategy succeeds, the economic ripple effects are expected to be at least equivalent to production inducement effects of about three times Gochang County’s current GRDP and employment inducement effects on the scale of one-third of Gochang County’s population, making it possible to realize a new vision of “Gochang, a Carbon-Neutral Advanced Power Industry City.”

This is not merely a development plan; it will become a new successful model for overcoming regional extinction, showing how localities can survive and grow in the era of carbon neutrality. An integrated cluster model encompassing energy, industry, education, and tourism could become a best-practice case that can spread to other regions as well.

The carbon-neutral advanced industrial city model is not ultimately a matter of technology, but of execution and strategy. It will require organic cooperation among the government, businesses, and local communities. What is needed now is a strong will to make it happen and the drive to push it forward. Gochang must be the starting point.

Gwang yong Go

(

Policy Director,

Center for Free Enterprise (CFE),

Director, Korean Regional Economics Association

)

[Photo = Provided by Gochang Newspaper]

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Original title: 고창에서 시작되는 탄소제로(CFE) 첨단산업도시 미래 구상

Author: Gwang yong Go

Date: 2025-05-29

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=27764