South Korea has given up on energy transition: Citizens must change the energy policy

Hyejeong Kim, Co-President, Sustainable Development Research Center

The Earth is boiling because of extreme heat waves, leaving billions of people suffering across the globe. Korea in August 2024 is no exception. Korea set up modern weather observation stations in 1907. In recent years, the country has experienced unprecedented stretches of tropical nights lasting nearly a month at a time. The current heat wave has led to 23 deaths, along with significant losses of livestock and fish. The extreme weather that now dominates the daily lives of Koreans serves as a stark warning: an urgent energy transition is needed in Korea, a country that ranks eighth globally in greenhouse gas emissions but has the lowest share of installed renewable energy capacity among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries.

In May this year, the Korean Government unveiled its working draft for the 11th Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand (hereinafter the “Basic Plan”), which includes policies for electricity supply and demand for the next 15 years (2024–2038). In Korea, the Basic Plan is updated every two years to guide the nation’s mid- and long-term strategies for electricity supply and demand. The Basic Plan’s 15-year scope provides detailed insights into the basic directions of and long-term perspectives on electricity supply and demand, generation equipment planning, and demand management. According to the Basic Plan, various demand management policies will be implemented, including projects related to thermal power generation, nuclear power generation, increased renewable energy generation, and enhanced energy efficiency. As such, the 11th Basic Plan is a crucial document that reflects the government’s commitment to its international pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and its policies aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. At the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) in December 2023, participants agreed to triple global renewable energy power generation capacity, double global average annual energy efficiency by 2030, and accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. These measures aim to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius degrees. The Korean Government also endorsed this international consensus.

A national energy policy lacking a plan to fulfill international pledges

          Fulfilling international pledges requires the government to incorporate detailed plans for achieving global commitments within its mid- and long-term national energy policy. However, the 11th Basic Plan falls short of this standard. The government has established a plan for new nuclear power plants based on inflated energy demand projections and has included a proposal to build a small modular reactor (SMR), despite this still being in the research and development stage. This approach places undue emphasis on a nuclear-centered energy policy. Conversely, the government has set a renewable energy generation goal that is less than half of what was promised to the international community, failed to include specific implementation plans for enhancing energy efficiency, and omitted a target year for phasing out coal-fired power plants in the Basic Plan. The Basic Plan only clearly reflects the government’s preference for a nuclear-centered energy policy, and it lacks a commitment to energy transition by expanding renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, and phasing out fossil fuels.

In the 11th Basic Plan, the government claimed that it could achieve its renewable energy supply target by providing 72GW of renewable energy by 2030, which would be more than three times the 2022 supply of 23GW. However, this 2030 target is marred by arbitrary interpretations and manipulative statistical presentations. To show that it can achieve the ambitious goal of tripling renewable energy generation, the government has deliberately lowered the figure for 2022. It has done so by including only solar and wind power in the 2022 renewable energy performance, while excluding energy generation from hydropower and biomass. According to the Korea Energy Agency, however, domestic renewable energy installed capacity, including hydropower, was 32.5GW in 2022. Tripling this capacity would require the production of 97.5GW. The agreement at COP28 to triple renewable energy capacity is based on the global increase in installed capacity needed by 2030. Considering Korea’s share of global renewable energy installed capacity, the expansion target for 2030 is actually estimated at approximately 164.9GW. The target presented in the Basic Plan thus falls well short, representing less than half of the tripling target promised to the international community.

Lagging in renewable energy among OECD members, stuck in a stalemate on expansion

          In 2023, Korea’s share of global renewable energy generation was only 8.4 per cent, the lowest share of renewable energy generation among OECD countries. The renewable energy supply target in the Basic Plan is essentially the abandonment of any serious effort to expand renewable energy. In fact, the current government’s renewable energy policy is so wretched that debating the exact target figure needed to achieve the tripling goal by 2030 seems pointless. Since its inception in May 2022, the Yoon Seok-yeol administration has prioritised establishing Korea as a nuclear powerhouse as a national goal, with demonstrable hostility toward the renewable energy industry. The government’s drastic cuts to the renewable energy budget and the abolition or reduction of various support systems for renewable energy businesses have led to a halving of solar power supply, and the situation is worsening. As a result, not only are domestic solar power companies struggling, but global solar module and inverter suppliers are also implementing voluntary retirements for factory workers and expanding operations overseas.

Renewable energy sacrificed to nuclear-centered energy policy

          Recently, the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MOTIE) announced a suspension of new permits for renewable energy power generation in the Honam region from September this year through to December 2031 due to transmission network saturation. Additionally, it revealed plans to designate 205 substations nationwide—across Honam, Jeju, Gangwon, and Gyeongbuk—as controlled substations, where power generation can be restricted at any time if solar and wind power generation increases. The government is moving forward with these restrictions without consulting renewable energy companies or providing specific measures. It has justified the decision by arguing that preventing “renewable energy oversaturation” is more important than addressing the power self-sufficiency rate of local governments. The regions where the government has announced it will restrict the connection of renewable energy to the electricity grid account for 61 per cent of domestic renewable energy production. Notably, the Honam region alone makes up about 40 per cent of the country’s solar power facilities. Jeju Island, a leader in energy transition, has set itself the goal of meeting 100 per cent of its electricity demand with new and renewable energy by 2030.

Despite this, in Honam region—where the government is pushing for grid disconnections—the lifespan of Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant Units 1 and 2 (totaling 2 GW) is being extended. The previous Moon Jae-in administration had planned to permanently close Hanbit Units 1 and 2 in December 2025 and September 2026, respectively, when their design lives were set to expire. As the current government pushes for the extension of the lifespan of all nuclear power plants, including Hanbit Units 1 and 2, there are reasons to suspect that the current administration has blocked the connection of renewable energy to the grid and suspended new renewable energy power generation permits in order to secure transmission capacity for Hanbit Units 1 and 2. The government’s policy not only hampers the future installation of new renewable energy power plants but also deals a direct blow to the renewable energy projects currently in development. The Yoon administration is promising to triple renewable energy capacity internationally while simultaneously undermining the renewable energy industry domestically. If the nuclear power industry continues to expand as the renewable energy market contracts, Korea’s energy transition will inevitably regress.

Fourth in electricity consumption, lowest in energy efficiency among OECD Countries, but no plan to improve energy efficiency

          Korea’s supply-oriented energy policy, which overlooks the declining growth rate of electricity demand since 2000 and includes nuclear power plant construction plans based on excessive demand forecasts that require about 14 years to complete, inevitably neglects demand management. On top of it all, Korea has the lowest electricity charges among OECD countries. As of 2021, it ranks eighth in energy consumption globally (fourth among OECD countries), but only 35th in energy efficiency (the lowest in the OECD). Energy conservation and efficiency through demand management are essential. However, the specific plans related to improving energy efficiency, which were promised to the international community, are not reflected in the “demand management” section, which is a key component of the Basic Plan.

Transition from fossil fuels without a specific target year

          COP28 agreed to a “transition from fossil fuels” and included “transitioning from fossil fuels in the energy system” to “achiev[ing] net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”. In April 2024, G7 governments agreed to completely stop coal-fired power generation by 2035. The Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), which includes 60 countries such as the United States, also aims to phase out coal by 2030 for OECD and European Union member countries, and by 2040 for other countries. However, of the 38 OECD countries, South Korea, along with Japan, Australia, and Türkiye, has not yet joined the coal phase-out alliance. In the 11th Basic Plan, Korea did not specify a target year for phasing out coal-fired power generation. Instead, it proposed converting old coal-fired plants to liquefied natural gas (LNG) power generation or expanding ammonia/hydrogen co-firing as alternatives to coal and LNG power. However, the alternative to coal-fired power generation should be renewable energy, not LNG or ammonia/hydrogen co-firing. LNG and ammonia/hydrogen co-firing are another source of greenhouse gas emissions. Promoting these options—which are more expensive and less competitive than domestic renewable energy—as means to reduce greenhouse gases is essentially a policy that ignores renewable energy and perpetuates reliance on fossil fuels.

The true face of the Yoon Seok-yeol government’s nuclear-obsessed energy policy

          South Korea is the world’s fifth-largest nuclear power producer, with 26 nuclear power plants in operation, and nuclear power accounted for 30.7 per cent of its electricity generation in 2023. It also has the highest nuclear power density in the world, with four more plants under construction. Upon taking office, the Yoon Seok-yeol administration revived plans to build the new nuclear power plants of Shin Hanul Units 3 and 4, which had been scrapped by the Moon Jae-in administration. Furthermore, according to the 11th Basic Plan, the government intends to build three new nuclear power plants (with a total capacity of 4.2 GW) by 2038, increasing the share of nuclear power generation to 35.6 per cent by that year. SMRs, which are still in the research and development stage, are also included in the new power generation facility plan. Finally, it is planned to extend the lifespan of 14 nuclear power plants, the design lifespans of which end by 2038, by an additional 10 years, with the possibility of extending the lifespan of 9 of these even further. The previous government did not plan to extend the lifespan of aging nuclear power plants or build new ones, as outlined in the 9th Basic Electricity Plan in 2020. However, the current government has completely overturned this approach by moving forward with the construction of additional nuclear power plants and extending the lifespan of 10 out of the 26 nuclear plants currently in operation. To extend the lifespan of nuclear power plants built with 40-year-old technology, safety assessments must incorporate the latest technological standards, especially in light of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Yet this government has not only included nuclear power plants that have not completed safety assessments in its facility plan, it is also considering a second lifespan extension, which might occur at least 10 years later, in its Basic Plan. The inclusion of SMRs—which have not yet been proven to be technically or economically viable by ongoing empirical studies, or even socially acceptable and safe—in new power generation facilities reveals the Yoon Seok-yeol administration’s deep-seated obsession with nuclear power.

The Yoon administration’s blind faith in nuclear power is not limited to expanding domestic nuclear power. It has also endorsed the discharge of radioactivity-contaminated water from Fukushima into the ocean, a move that the Japanese Government has been advocating since 2016. The administration has abandoned even the minimal role of opposing the Japanese Government’s ocean dumping of radioactive water. Instead, it has actively promoted and justified the discharge through on-site visits to the Fukushima nuclear power plant and daily briefings. The administration has also defended the final report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which approved the ocean dumping at the request of the Japanese Government, and used it for domestic propaganda. At the Conference of the Parties of the London Convention and Protocol—an international convention banning ocean dumping of waste—held in London in October 2023, China and Russia argued that the ocean dumping of contaminated water violated the convention and called for in-depth discussions on whether it constitutes ocean dumping. However, the Korean Government accepted Japan’s stance that the discharge of contaminated water does not fall under the definition of ocean dumping as outlined by the London Convention and Protocol, thereby relinquishing its last opportunity to raise the issue of contaminated water disposal through international conventions.

Pave the way to energy transition: Harnessing citizen power to address the climate crisis and transform politics

          Through the 11th Basic Plan and the MOTIE’s grid disconnection policy, it has become evident that the Yoon Seok-yeol administration has no intention to realise a carbon-neutral energy transition policy. Lowering global temperature rise and halting the climate crisis requires the Korean Government to actively fulfill its promises to the international community, but this is not something that can be expected from the current administration. Desperation to escape this summer’s extreme heat wave should fuel a change in government policy. It is time to recognise that only the power of citizens, organised through action born of desperation, can lead the energy transition. The path to energy transition can be forged when we respond to the climate crisis and politics through a multi-layered civil movement involving diverse groups. Once again, it is time for citizens to step forward.

The views in this article are not necessarily those of FES.