South Korea has selected the construction of a gas-fired combined-cycle power plant in Encinal, Texas, as the first project under its $200 billion strategic investment initiative in the United States.
Minister of Trade, Industry and Resources Kim Jung-kwan reported the decision to the National Assembly on Tuesday. According to officials, the Encinal project is designed to respond to rapidly growing electricity demand in Texas, where semiconductor factories and artificial intelligence data centers are expanding.
The project will have a total capacity of about 6.3 gigawatts. A 1.4 GW gas turbine power plant will be built first to evaluate actual demand and economic feasibility. After that, an additional 4.9 GW of combined-cycle capacity is expected to be constructed in stages.
The total project cost is estimated at $22.3 billion. The government reportedly expects the project to generate between $43.29 billion and $45.4 billion over 20 years, which it says would be enough to recover the investment and financing costs.
Two other major energy projects are still under discussion: the construction of nuclear reactors in the US and an LNG development project in Alaska. For the nuclear project, Seoul is negotiating to acquire a 5-10 percent stake in US nuclear company Westinghouse.
cheesuk@heraldcorp.com
