Korean Electricity Regulatory Commission (KOREC) Lisences, 2001-2022

Pursuant to the 2001 Electric Utility Act, the Korean Electricity Regulatory Commission (KOREC) is tasked with overseeing regulatory matters within the Korean electricity market alongside the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE). As part of this responsibility, the commission reviews and approves large-scale energy projects (above 2 MW) on a quarterly basis. The licensing process provides an important input to long-term energy plans regularly issued by MOTIE. It also provides granular view of Korean energy investment trends, and the evolution of the sector, over time. To construct a novel data, the complete ledger covering all licenses was downloaded from KORECs website: http://www.korec.go.kr/bbs/bbsView.do?table_no=710&bbs_sntnc_no=509#. This constitutes a complete list of all licenses issued by KOREC from April 2001 up until December 2022, constituting a total of individual 2021 entries. Each specifies i) a relevant licensing number, ii) the name of the project representative/CEO, iii) company name, iv) the location, either in the form of an address or coordinates, iv) the technology type, v) the total MW capacity, vi) the date of approval, vii) the project development period and viii) the stated reason for resubmitting an existing license (if applicable). First, the complete Korean-language PDF file was translated to English-language excel file using the Deepl Pro and the Adobe Pro APIs. Subsequently, a Korean research assistant manually reviewed 116 first entries in the converted file to assess its quality compared to the original document. This reflected around 17 percent of all entries. The comparison identified minor spelling errors across all categories, and with respect to the correct formatting of Korean names, addresses, and companies. Errors in the translation numerical values (e.g., 2001, 20 September 2021 and 3 MW) were absent. While these discrepancies, i.e., spelling errors of individual words, reflect an important limitation, they do not jeopardize the overall validity of the data, given that numerical values and the meaning of key categories, such as technology types, remained consistent across both versions. Secondly, the data from all years was merged into the same Excel file. To further standardize the contents, additional categories were added, including: i) size (MW) ii) technology category (biomass, waste, coal, LNG, fuel cell, wind, solar and nuclear), iii) KEPCO/KEPCO subsidiary and iv) license status. Technology categories were coded to enable a more systematic analysis across different technology types, i.e., to exclude minor technologies such as tidal power and battery technologies. To understand the Korean government’s role as a project developer, a column indicating whether the state-owned distribution company (KEPCO) or one of its 6 subsidiaries (Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co; Korea South-East Power Co.; Korea Midland Power Co.; Korea Western Power Co.; Korea Southern Power Co.; Korea East-West Power Co.) were listed as project company was included. Finally, to distinguish between new licenses and changes made to existing ones, a new column was also added indicating whether new information was included in the “stated reason for resubmission”. Descriptive pivot tables are included in adjacent sheets to highlight key trends.