Gyeonggi Province to Establish 200 "RE100 Income Villages" This Year

Gyeonggi Province is promoting the creation of "Gyeonggi RE100 Income Villages."

Gyeonggi Province has set a long-term goal of establishing a total of 2,000 RE100 Income Villages in the province by 2030, and this year it is recruiting participants to support 200 villages.

The core of this project is to return profits from solar power generation to residents in the form of "sunlight income," "village funds," or "electricity bill reductions." To help ensure the successful implementation of the central government's policy, Gyeonggi Province will invest 12.8 billion won from the provincial budget this year.

The support targets are energy-vulnerable villages, such as areas not supplied with city gas, as well as apartment complexes.

For village-type projects, 70% of the installation cost is subsidized (30% by the province and 40% by cities and counties), and for apartment complexes, 60% of rooftop solar installation costs is subsidized (30% each by the province and by cities and counties).

Village-level solar projects often take more than one year to actually launch due to complex preliminary procedures such as resident consent, permits and approvals, and site identification.

To resolve these on-site bottlenecks, Gyeonggi Province is operating a "one-stop support system" through the Gyeonggi Province Environment and Energy Agency. By having a public institution provide close support throughout the administrative procedures, the province plans to drastically shorten project timelines and, in cooperation with the central government, actively facilitate the use of national and public land within villages as solar power generation sites.

Gyeonggi RE100 Sodeukmaeul Information Poster

In a real example, Machimi Village in Pocheon built a power plant through household-level investments and is receiving an average of more than 200,000 won per month in sunlight income.

Apartment complexes in Suwon and Pyeongtaek, which installed 120 kW of rooftop solar power last year as a pilot project, are expected to reduce their annual common-area electricity bills by about 30 million won.

Following a preliminary briefing session on the 15th of last month, Gyeonggi Province held the main briefing session on the 26th, with more than 200 officials from cities and counties and project operators in attendance.

Cha Sungsoo, Director General of Climate, Environment and Energy at Gyeonggi Province, said, "Gyeonggi Province will take the lead in rapidly spreading successful models of sunlight income villages," adding, "We look forward to strong interest and participation from cities, counties, and residents of Gyeonggi Province in the 'Gyeonggi RE100 Income Village' project, which is Gyeonggi Province's own model of a sunlight income village."

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