‘A structural dependence on heavy industry': can South Korea wean itself off fossil fuels?

The Guardian

a day ago

GDP per capita per annum: US$34,640 (global average $14,210)
Total annual tonnes CO2: 577.42.m (tenth highest country)
CO2 per capita: 11.16 metric tonnes (global average 4.7)
Most recent NDC (carbon plan): 2021
Climate plans: highly insufficient
On a cool early morning on South Korea's east coast, Eunbin Kang pointed to a monument to a vanishing era.
The 2.1GW Samcheok Blue power plant which came online in South Korea in January looms out of the headlands above a beach made internationally famous by a K-pop album shoot. It is expected to emit 13m tonnes of CO2 annually, while its lifespan could stretch beyond 2050, the year by which the country has pledged to reach carbon neutrality. The country was building coal-fired power plants, said Kang, an activist who heads the Youth Climate Emergency Action group and relocated to this city to oppose the facility, 'even as the climate emergency demands an immediate halt to fossil fuel expansion'.
But Samcheok is not an outlier. It is a symbol of the stark climate contradiction at the heart of the world's 12th largest economy, celebrated for its technological prowess in semiconductors and electric vehicle batteries, yet among the top ten worst global climate performers.
Despite South Korea's impressive climate pledges to reach net zero by 2050 with a 40% reduction in emissions from 2018 levels by 2030, fossil fuels still dominate its energy mix: 60% of electricity comes from coal and gas, while renewables make up just 9%, a quarter of the OECD average of 34%.
Monopoly strangling transition
At the heart of South Korea's climate failure is an energy model based on a state monopoly and central planning. Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco), the state-owned energy company, controls transmission, distribution and retail, while its subsidiaries dominate generation, creating structural challenges for competitors. These include Korea South-East Power, Korea Western Power and four other generation subsidiaries that together operate the vast majority of the country's coal, gas and nuclear power plants.
Meanwhile, renewable energy developers face an obstacle course of regulatory barriers. Until recently, windfarm developers had to obtain 28 different permits from multiple ministries in a bureaucratic maze which created years of delays and significantly increased project costs, making many otherwise viable developments financially unfeasible. Progress was made in early 2025 with the passage of a long-awaited bill aimed at streamlining approvals, although the law won't take effect until 2026.
Grid connection remains another hurdle. While electricity demand has grown by 98% over the past two decades, the transmission network has expanded by just 26%, but attempts to expand the grid have led to bitter local conflicts.
In Miryang, South Gyeongsang province, the government tried to compel residents to sell up to clear space for transmission towers and people faced violent crackdowns during a six-year standoff. Currently, a dozen such projects are stalled in the country.
In February 2025, the National Assembly passed a Power Grid Special Act aimed at expanding transmission. But civic groups warn the law reinforces the country's decades-old top-down model of infrastructure development, removing what few safeguards remained around public consultation and environmental review.
'We fully acknowledge that renewable energy transition requires transmission lines,' says Kim Jeong-jin from Friends of the Earth in Dangjin, where one project faced more than 10 years of delays due to local opposition. 'But the repeated conflicts arise because the electricity is not even for local use, yet it causes damage to our region without any regard for our voices.'
The country's energy strategy is guided by the Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand, a 15-year forecast revised every two years. But the framework, which dates back to the 1960s, still prioritises centralised, large-scale power generation – a model built for coal and nuclear, and fundamentally incompatible with today's decentralised, flexible renewable technologies.
Political volatility worsens the problem. Each five-year presidential term brings a policy reversal. For instance, in 2017, President Moon Jae-in announced a nuclear phase-out; his successor, the now disgraced ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol, reversed course five years later. This whiplash undermines any long-term planning for renewables – a problem faced by democracies around the world.
The consequences are stark. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent fossil fuel prices soaring, Kepco incurred enormous losses. In 2022 alone, South Korea faced an extra 22tn won (£11.9 bn) in LNG power costs. Yet the government kept electricity prices artificially low, a political choice that pushed Kepco's debt to a staggering 205tn won (£111bn) by 2024.
Despite this crisis, meaningful reform remains elusive. This entrenched monopoly system has effectively blocked the clean energy transition, with independent renewable producers struggling to gain meaningful access to a market dominated by fossil fuel interests.
Carbon-intensive by design
More broadly, South Korea's postwar rise relied on energy-intensive industries: steel, petrochemicals, shipbuilding and semiconductors.
'This structural dependency on heavy and chemical industries makes the energy transition extraordinarily difficult,' says Park Sangin, a professor of economics at Seoul National University. 'These industries are deeply embedded in the country's economic fabric and require vast amounts of stable, cheap electricity.'
Powerful chaebols, or family-controlled conglomerates like Posco, Samsung and Hyundai, exert outsized influence on national policy. Their operations are supported by an electricity market designed for industrial stability, not climate mitigation.
And the problem isn't just domestic; South Korea also finances and provides the infrastructure for fossil fuels globally. South Korean shipbuilders dominate the global market for LNG carriers. Public financial institutions also bankroll overseas fossil fuel projects.
One that was recently approved, the Coral Norte gas project in Mozambique, is projected to emit 489m tonnes of CO2 across its lifecycle. At the same time, South Korea has emerged as one of the world's top importers of Russian fossil fuels, even as other nations cut ties.
'This financing directly contradicts [South] Korea's climate targets and makes a mockery of the Paris Agreement,' says Dongjae Oh, the head of the gas team at Solutions for Our Climate (SFOC). 'It exposes the country's hypocrisy – adopting climate targets at home while funding climate destruction abroad.'
Even climate-friendly institutions continue backing fossil fuels. The National Pension Service (NPS), one of the world's largest pension funds, remains a major investor in coal and gas projects, despite a 2021 'coal-free' declaration. Three and a half years after this announcement, NPS only finalised its coal divestment strategy in December 2024, with a timeline that will delay implementation for domestic assets until 2030.
Meanwhile, South Korea's market-based climate policies have failed to drive meaningful change. The emissions trading scheme (K-ETS) was supposed to put a price on carbon when it launched in 2015.
But the system, which hands out free allowances to the largest companies, has instead created perverse incentives, according to campaign group Plan 1.5. The group carried out an analysis and found that South Korea's 10 largest polluters have made over 475bn won (£258bn) from selling unused carbon credits between 2015 and 2022. The system that was meant to make polluters pay has instead rewarded them.
Next generation fights back
There is growing awareness of a climate crisis as the country begins to experience increasingly severe weather. In 2023 46 people died in floods that displaced thousands. More recently, torrential rains have again caused at least 26 deaths, followed by a record-breaking heatwave.
In March this year devastating wildfires swept across more than 48,000 hectares (118,610 acres) – roughly 80% of the area of Seoul – killing 31 people and destroying thousands of homes. The country's disaster chief described the situation as 'a climate crisis unlike anything we've experienced before'.
The prime minister, Kim Min-seok, has described the climate crisis as 'the new normal'.
Now a new generation of South Koreans is challenging the status quo through legal action. In February, a group of children gathered outside Posco's office in Seoul. Among them was 11-year-old Yoohyun Kim, the youngest plaintiff in a groundbreaking lawsuit against Posco.
The case aims to block the company's plan to reline an old coal-fired blast furnace, a move that would extend its life by 15 years and emit an estimated 137m tonnes of CO2.
'I came here during my precious winter break, my last as an elementary school student, because I want to protect all four seasons,' Yoohyun told supporters. 'Spring and autumn are disappearing with climate change – and with them, the chance for children like me to play freely outside.'
The lawsuit is the first of its kind globally to target traditional blast furnace production. It follows a crucial ruling by South Korea's constitutional court last August which found that the government's climate policies violated the rights of future generations by failing to set legally binding targets for 2031-50.
In March, residents and activists filed another suit over the government's approval of the world's largest semiconductor cluster in Yongin, backed by a 360tn won (£195bn) Samsung investment. The suit argues that the project's 10GW electricity demand and new LNG plants contradict climate regulations and corporate sustainability commitments.
Kim Jeongduk, an activist from Political Mamas who participated in protests against the Samcheok Blue plant with her child, sees this as a generational struggle.
'Growing up in Pohang, I saw smokestacks fill the sky on my way to school every day. My throat would hurt from fine dust, and iron particles would collect on our windowsills,' she recalls.
'Adults always said: 'Thanks to Posco, our region survives.' I don't want my child to grow up with that same false choice between a healthy environment and economic survival.'
The international data shows that South Korea's emissions peaked in 2018, and have been falling, with a brief jump after Covid, ever since. The government maintains that it is making progress on its climate goals, although critics argue that it is relying on some wonky calculations around its 2030 emission reduction target, confusing net with gross emissions.
'South Korea is actively pursuing bold reduction of coal power generation through prohibiting new permits for coal power plants and phasing out ageing facilities,' the ministry said in a statement, arguing that any remaining coal plants operating beyond 2050, such as those approved before the 2021 ban, would be addressed through 'carbon capture and storage technology and clean fuel conversion' in a way 'not inconsistent with our carbon neutrality commitment'.
But independent analysis suggests these measures fall well short. 'The Basic Plan has no specific plan for how to expand renewable energy,' says Prof Park. 'There are vague targets, but no timeline, no locations. In stark contrast, the nuclear roadmap is extremely detailed and specific.'
His recent research using the Global Change Assessment Model shows the current plan would fall short of meeting South Korea's 2030 emissions targets by approximately 6-7%.
A more ambitious policy focused on offshore wind expansion and a complete phase-out of coal by 2035 could not only meet climate goals but reduce power sector emissions by 82% by 2035.
When confronted with criticisms of its emissions accounting, South Korea's environment ministry defended its approach: 'Our emissions reduction target calculation method considers international regulations and major country cases. Countries like Japan and Canada use similar calculation methods for their 2030 NDCs,' a spokesperson said.
The ministry added that although previous targets used the older 1996 IPCC guidelines, from 2024 they have begun using the updated 2006 standards for national greenhouse gas statistics.
Back in Samcheok, Eunbin Kang looks out at the coal plant that now dominates the coastal landscape.
'I dream of a society where exploitation and plunder are replaced by decentralisation and autonomy,' she says. 'I want to contribute to spreading lifestyles and policies that allow everyone to lead a good life without requiring a lot of electricity or money.'