ABSTRACT
The world’s concerns with new renewable energy are rising day after day. Practical norms have been implemented to decrease greenhouse gas emissions through the Climate Change Convention and other agreements in response to global warming. However, the world’s energy consumption is still expected to rise continuously. In particular, South Korea, which imports more than 97% of its required energy, urgently needs to develop new renewable energy that can replace existing fossil energies (Stepan, 2008). New renewable energies include solar heat, sunlight, wind, geothermal, and ocean energy. Among them, thermal ocean energy is a very stable and unlimited clean energy resource. The annual amount of solar energy absorbed by the ocean, which covers about 71% of the earth’s surface, is assumed to be about 4,000 times greater than the total energy that humans are currently consuming (Vega, 2003).
