Korea scraps one-year wind measurement rule for onshore projects

South Korea's environment ministry said Wednesday it will no longer require onshore wind developers to submit a year of their own wind measurements with permit applications, replacing the requirement with government modelling data as it moves to shorten project preparation.

The change takes effect Oct. 1 under a revised notice on detailed permit standards for power generation. Developers will instead submit reproduction wind field data provided through the Korea Meteorological Administration's renewable energy weather information platform, which combines artificial intelligence with numerical forecasting to map wind across the Korean Peninsula at a 1-kilometre resolution and 10-minute intervals, covering June 2021 to May 2026.

Without the one-year measurement obligation, developers can file their permit applications and business plans under the existing procedure but substitute the meteorological data for the survey data they previously had to gather themselves. Other requirements, including financial capacity and local acceptance, are still reviewed under the same standards.

The measure follows an onshore wind promotion strategy announced jointly by relevant ministries on Dec. 3, 2025, and focuses on removing regulations seen as unnecessary to shorten preparation periods and ease the burden on developers. The ministry also revised how it judges overlapping site applications: priority will be decided within a 2-kilometre radius of the applied-for coordinates, and where multiple developers apply for the same area, the ministry will weigh permit review criteria and how far each has prepared its project.

Developers that installed wind resource measurement equipment before the notice takes effect will remain subject to the old rules to protect existing operators, and companies that already hold generation permits will be allowed to install measurement equipment for turbine bidding and financing.

Discussions on ways to promote publicly led onshore wind with resident participation were held at a regional forum in Gangwon on Sept. 17, the second such meeting after one in Incheon in July.