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Korea’s Jeju Island Is a Leader in Clean Energy. But It’s Increasingly Having to Curtail Its Renewables
It’s a cautionary tale for places, including those in the U.S., where wind and solar power generation outpace the capabilities of the electrical grid.
By June Kim
Along the turquoise beaches of South Korea’s Jeju Island, hundreds of wind turbines spin as ferociously as the coastal wind. A few kilometers inland, large solar farms are hard at work converting the sun’s light into power.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
State of Play
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.