Background and Objective
Background of This ResearchTotal installation capacity of wind power plants in South Korea reaches 174MW in 2007. According to the installation plan of Korea Institute of Energy Research and Core research center of wind power, the total capacity is expected to rise into 1,404MW. Although there are several advantages in the wind power such as clean energy, substitution of imported fossil energy, and spill-over effects, there are various kinds of disadvantages including noise, disturbance of ecosystem, transformation of landscape, and etc. Especially, many of large wind power plans have been constructed in the mountainous areas, which may cause big impacts on the ecosystem as well as natural landscape. In the future, the number of wind power plants which will be built in the mountainous sites will increase considerably. Therefore, we need to investigate the possible impacts of wind power constructions on the economic as well as environmental aspects.