Title of Dissertation: national renewable energy policy

Figure 36. 
Solar PV installation, 2003-2014. 
Source: 2014 Statistics on the Dissemination of New and Renewable Energy, MOTIE 
and KEA. 
One of the experts said that the more important driver of the solar installation was 
the increase of low-priced solar PV products rather than the introduction of the RPS: 
“The prices of the products were enormously dropped due to the large-scale investments 
in manufacturing and the global financial crisis. Actually, declining prices of the products 
was one of the reasons of this trend. We do not see the introduction of the RPS as the 
driver of increasing solar installation”.
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One of the other experts pointed out another 
reason that solar PV has been more competitive than other renewable energy sources: 
“There was no other option other than solar PV. [Power utilities] could not install wind 
power due to lack of permit. The raw materials for bioenergy needed to be imported from 
other countries such as Indonesia. Fuel cells were expensive”.
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Interview #30 
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Interview #31 
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Under the sharp rise of solar PV installation, the solar PV project owners had 
struggled with decreasing profits and market uncertainty. The revenue of solar PV 
projects is from System Marginal Price (SMP) plus Renewable Energy Certificates 
(RECs). The SMP has been decreased continually since 2012 (Figure 37). The prices of 
RECs have fluctuated (Figure 38). Under this circumstance, the project owners had 
difficulty to finance their projects because it was hard to predict the revenue from solar 
PV projects.
Figure 37. 
System marginal price, 2012-2015. 
Source: “System Marginal Price,” Electric Power Statistics Information System, 
http://epsis.kpx.or.kr/epsis/ekmaStaticMain.do?cmd=004013&flag=&locale=KR
 
(accessed June 30, 2016) 
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