Seoul Archdiocese joins Korean capital's ‘solar city’ project

Seoul Archdiocese is encouraging the Catholic faithful to use more solar energy.  Recently Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung of Seoul signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Seoul mayor to work together to expand solar generation. 

According to the MoU, which is the first public-private partnership related to the solar city project with the Church, the Seoul Archdiocese will increase generating solar power via the roofs of its parish buildings and on church-owned land including parking lots. It will also encourage parishioners to install solar generators in their homes.

Signing the MoU, Cardinal Yeom said that the Catholic Church too is happy to join the project to make the city a ‘solar city’. 

The Archdiocese will install a solar power generator at Eungam-dong Church early this year and later do the same in other parishes. It will also install a solar-power mobile phone charger at Myeongdong Cathedral.

The city decided to reduce energy consumption and produce renewable energy, thereby increasing its energy self-sufficiency rate, as the temperature on the Korean Peninsula has increased by 1.7°C over the last century because of global warming induced by Green House Gas emissions. Around 30 percent of the nation’s energy was obtained from nuclear power.  

The Seoul Metropolitan Government wants to power one out of every three households with solar panels by 2022.  There were just 3,000 households with miniature generators in 2014, but that has increased to 18,000 in 2017. (UCAN)