Korea's "Green Growth Strategy" includes DME in long-term plans

BLUEFUELENERGY.COM: As outlined in a series of articles in the Korea Herald, South Korea's leading English-language newspaper, the South Korean government has a "Green Growth Strategy" which includes what it calls, "second-generation technologies," that will take waste and transform it into value-added energy carriers such as hydrogen, natural gas, diesel, methanol, ethanol, and DME.

These second generation technologies would be used in various areas other than power plant and boiler fuel applications, which would be targeted for first-generation waste-to-energy technologies such as the direct use of solid, liquid, or gaseous fuels to generate electricity.

Although it is good news that the Korean government is including DME in its energy plans, the timetable as outlined in this article by Kim Seong-soo, principal researcher of the Wastes Energy Research Center at the Korea Institute of Energy Research, is less promising. According to Kim, second-generation technologies will not enter the energy market in Korea until sometime after 2020.

Kim suggests that one major reason for this slow pace is "the lack of corporate participation in R&D." As a solution to this problem, Kim suggests that Korean R&D should "aim to build demonstration or commercialization plants rather than develop basic technologies..." and "the Korean central and local governments should participate in R&D from the beginning...."