Government Announces Carbon Neutral Technology Development Project…410 Billion KRW National Funding Support

Applications Open from the 17th for Carbon Neutral Industrial Core Technology Development

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy has announced the Carbon Neutral Industrial Core Technology Development Project and will accept applications for participation in the project for about 30 days until the 17th of next month.

By 2030, 935.2 billion KRW (694.7 billion KRW in national funds) will be invested in carbon-neutral technology development for the four major high-emission industries (steel, chemical, cement, semiconductor & display) to develop game-changing technologies such as hydrogen reduction steelmaking, electric heating furnaces for chemical processes, blended cement, and low-temperature warming process gases. Through this, it plans to reduce more than half of the industrial sector's carbon reduction target of 210 million tons by 2050, aiming for a reduction of 110 million tons.

This year, 41 billion KRW in national funds will be supported for 43 projects first. By 2030, more than 80% of the total project cost will be invested up to the demonstration stage to ensure that the developed carbon reduction technologies can be immediately utilized in the field.

In the steel sector, 11 projects (national funds 10.3 billion KRW) will start this year focusing on hydrogen reduction steelmaking and hyper electric furnaces to replace blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace processes that use coke (main raw material: bituminous coal), with a total investment of 209.7 billion KRW (national funds 120.5 billion KRW) over 8 years. In the petrochemical sector, 6 projects (national funds 8.9 billion KRW) will start this year to reduce carbon emissions in hydrocarbon (naphtha, etc.) cracking processes, supporting a total of 185.8 billion KRW over 8 years for electric furnace cracking processes and methane conversion to petrochemical raw materials.

In the cement sector, considering the large amount of carbon emitted during the limestone calcination process, 10 projects (national funds 7.4 billion KRW) will start this year to develop blended cement with minimized limestone content and fuel substitution (bituminous coal → recycled resources), with a total investment of 282.6 billion KRW (national funds 197.5 billion KRW) over 8 years. In the semiconductor & display sector, 16 projects (national funds 14.4 billion KRW) will start this year, with a total investment of 257.1 billion KRW (national funds 191 billion KRW) over 8 years to replace fluorinated gases used in core manufacturing processes such as etching, deposition, and cleaning with new process gases that have significantly lower global warming potential, and to develop process technologies tailored to these gases.

Hwang Soo-seong, Director of the Industrial Infrastructure Office at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, stated, “We urge capable companies to actively participate alongside the best research teams of our time to carry out technology development through to demonstration for these high-difficulty technologies. The government will also do its best to create an environment where participants in the development project can fully focus on their research.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.