President Park Geun-hye on Thursday visited an eco-friendly energy town in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province, in her latest on-site campaign to promote her policy drive to tackle climate change and bolster new energy industries.

Park met with residents and key officials at the nation's first town -- some 102 kilometers east of Seoul -- that meets its energy demand through the processing of natural and renewable energy resources such as biomass, solar energy and hydropower.

The president urged them to rev up efforts to spread the town's energy-generation model throughout the nation and explore ways to export it by turning the town into a major tourist destination.

"This (town) is a good example of a new paradigm given that it has refurbished itself into one that others also want to emulate, through methods such as turning garbage into (energy) resources," she said in a meeting with the residents. 

"I call for your efforts to spread this example across the country and further across the world," she added.

To mark her visit to the town, residents offered her a certificate of being an "honorary" resident.

The new town was built in December 2015 as the government was seeking to turn its international commitment to combating climate change into an opportunity to bolster new energy industries at home.

Seoul has set its 2030 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 37 percent from business-as-usual, or BAU, levels. The target was announced before world leaders adopted the so-called

Paris Agreement in December to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The pact adopts a "bottom-up" approach, which allows each country to devise its own "nationally determined" plan for carbon emission cuts.

The town of Hongcheon is equipped with a set of plants to generate biogas and electricity from livestock excretions, food waste, sewage, solar energy and hydropower. The plants help curtail greenhouse gas emissions and electricity charges for residents and create jobs, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae explained.

The construction of the biogas production plant in the town initially faced strong opposition from local residents. But with the benefits of the plant known to the public, other towns such as Wanju, North Jeolla Province, have decided to join the eco-friendly town project.

With an aim to develop Hongcheon into a world-renowned tourist attraction like Juhnde, Germany's bioenergy village, the town has been seeking to develop diverse educational and entertainment facilities such as a hot spring resort.

The town has already been morphing into an educational site for public servants, provincial government officials and corporate officials. Over the last six months, more than 1,300 people have visited the town on field trips. (Yonhap)