South Korea and sustainable energy
South Korea, a significant economic player in East Asia, is actively pursuing sustainable energy initiatives, particularly in its capital, Seoul, which was designated a Green Growth city in 2010. This initiative aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating job opportunities and boosting profits in a new sustainable energy economy. South Korea faces challenges due to its high per capita energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuel imports, which constituted approximately 98% of its energy needs as of 2023. The country has set ambitious goals, including a 40% reduction in greenhouse gases and a 20% increase in renewable energy sources by 2030, with a focus on green technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells and solar power.
Seoul's Green Growth plan emphasizes transforming the city's infrastructure to become more energy-efficient while promoting the creation of one million green jobs. The reliance on imported energy sources, particularly from volatile regions, has prompted South Korea to seek diversification in its energy portfolio, including investment in nuclear power, which currently provides about one-third of its electricity. With ongoing investment in green technologies and infrastructure, South Korea aspires to transition into a more sustainable economy and reduce its carbon footprint, making it a noteworthy case in the global discourse on energy sustainability.
South Korea and sustainable energy
Official Name: Republic of Korea
Summary: South Korea is a major economic power in East Asia. In 2010, South Korea announced a plan to turn its capital city, Seoul, into a Green Growth city, with plans to reduce greenhouse gases and create jobs and profits from a new, sustainable energy economy.
The peninsula of Korea has been occupied since the Paleolithic period, and the current civilization began around the twenty-fourth century BCE. The modern nation of South Korea was formed in 1948 after the liberation of Korea from Japanese rule resulted in the division of the country between the democratic South Korea and the communist North Korea. After the subsequent war between the two Koreas, the South Korean economy gradually grew until the country became a major power in East Asia. Today a member of the G-20 major economies, its economy is the fourth-largest in Asia and fifteenth-largest in the world when ranked by purchasing power parity. South Korea’s economy is driven largely by exports, especially of electronics, automobiles, heavy machinery, robotics, and petrochemicals. In 2010, South Korea underscored its significance on the global stage with the announcement of its intention to turn Seoul into a Green Growth city, representing a new paradigm in sustainability and energy economics. Under South Korea’s plan, Seoul not only will reduce its greenhouse gases but also will create jobs and generate profits in the process.
Energy Consumption
South Korea relied on imports to meet nearly 98 percent of its fossiel fuel needs in 2023. The country had a population of more than 52 million people. The city of Seoul was the political, economic, and cultural capital of South Korea and had a population of nearly 10 million people in 2024. It has the highest per capita energy consumption in Asia, which has risen steadily and rapidly since the 1970s as South Korea’s economy expanded. Seoul’s designation as a Green Growth city in 2010 was, thus, all the more significant, because of the challenges presented by large or dense populations and the widely varying needs of the citizenry in large cities, which tend to be culturally and economically diverse. Even before the Green Growth designation, Seoul was known as one of the more technologically sophisticated cities in the world, an early adopter of wireless high-speed mobile Internet and a citywide fiber-optic broadband network.
The size of the metropolitan area has historically affected transportation issues in Seoul, which has one of the world’s largest subway systems and the Korea Train Express (KTX), a high-speed rail system that regularly travels at 190 miles (305 kilometers) per hour and serves about 150,000 passengers. Although major manufacturers like Samsung and Hyundai-Kia are based in Seoul, most of the area’s air pollution comes from vehicular exhaust, and converting public transportation to green vehicles is a cornerstone of the Green Growth plan. The Master Plan for Low Carbon Green Growth sets out numerous goals from 2010 to 2030, including the reduction of greenhouse gases by 40 percent and a 20 percent increase in new or renewable energy sources, goals that naturally complement each other.
The plan also calls for the creation of one million new green jobs, which is really the crux of the Green Growth initiative: the state’s vigorous promotion of the green technologies sector as the keystone of a new approach to urban planning. South Korea plans to spend $45 billion, with costs including the redesign not only of Seoul’s buildings but also of its layout and transportation systems, with an end goal of a “human-oriented city” consuming less energy, employing more people, and making more money. Less than half of 1 percent of Seoul’s energy is generated in the city, a figure the plan intends to change. Major investment is planned in hydrogen fuel cells and local solar power. Between 2008 and 2012, South Korea, the government doubled its investment in green technology. Between 2011 and 2013, the top thirty private companies in the country invested more than $26 billion. In 2024, South Korea announced a $313 billion green financing plan, which set a goal of increasing its renewable power generation from 9.2 percent to 21.6 percent by 2030.
The Hollywood of Sustainability
Seoul has essentially positioned itself as the Hollywood of sustainability—a city that can found its wealth on sustainable growth. Its creation of green jobs take advantage of Seoul’s experience in advanced technologies and will specifically focus on ten areas: solar cells, hydrogen fuel cells, light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, green information technology (IT), IT electricity, green building, green cars, urban environment recovery, climate change adaptation technology, and recovering waste for repurposing into resources.
Like Seoul, South Korea is dependent on imported energy. In 1964, before the rapid expansion of the economy, energy imports were at only about 10 percent; by 1991, imports were 90 percent, and in the twenty-first century South Korea has been among the top-five importers of coal, liquefied natural gas, and crude oil in the world. In 2015, South Korea relied on imports to meet roughly 98 percent of its fossil fuel consumption. This trend continued into the 2020s. For example, in 2022, South Korea produced 15.595 million metric tons of coal but consumed 136,413 metric tons. The country also consumed more natural gas than it produced. Dependence on Middle Eastern sources of oil has tied Korea’s fortunes to volatile fuel prices, exactly the sort of morass the Green Growth plan hopes to plot a course away from, and in 2011 it announced plans to diversify its energy sources by importing liquefied natural gas from Australia, Russia, and North America. Furthermore, its industries are energy-intensive ones: It takes South Korea’s manufacturing sector nearly twice as much energy to produce $1 million of outputs as it does Japan’s manufacturing sector (also a heavy importer of fossil fuels), because of the high energy costs of industries such as petrochemicals, automobiles, and shipbuilding. The country has no oil reserves, and the domestic coal supply is scant and of low quality. The Korea District Heating Corporation supplies combined heat and power to Seoul and Daegu and is the world’s largest distributed heat company. Hydroelectric power has been explored but in 2022, only 0.4 percent of the country's energy production came from this source.
Increasing Nuclear Power
In 2022, South Korea had an installed nuclear capacity of 27.6 percent. In 2024, South Korea had 26 nuclear reactors and two more under construction. These reactors provided one-third of the country's electricity. While Korea's president in 2017 planned to phase out nuclear power over the next 45 years, this has changed. President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was elected in 2022, set a goal of achieving a minimum of 30 percent of the country's electricity by 2030.
Although many hope for an eventual unification of the two Koreas, South Korea’s energy situation in the twenty-first century has made it clear that taking on additional energy costs because of a unification was not possible. Because of a lack of resources, as of 2024, South Korea relied on imports to meet 98 percent of its fossil fuel needs and had no international oil or natural gas pipelines.
Bibliography
Cho, Lee-Jay, Yoon Hyung Kim, and Chung H. Lee, eds. Industrial Globalization in the Twenty-First Century: Impact and Consequences for East Asia and Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002.
Choi, Y. H. “South Korea’s Economic Development and the Evolving Role of the Government: Energy and Water.” Journal of East Asian Affairs 25, Part 1 (2011).
Denmark, Abraham, and Zachary M. Hosford. Securing South Korea: A Strategic Alliance for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2010.
Hong, S. “Where Is the Nuclear Nation Going? Hopes and Fears Over Nuclear Energy in South Korea After the Fukushima Disaster.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 5, no. 3 (September 1, 2011).
"Korea, South." The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 31 July 2024, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/korea-south/#energy. Accessed 4 Aug. 2024.
"South Korea." US Energy Information Agency (EIA), 13 Apr. 2023, www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/KOR. Accessed 4 Aug. 2024.
"South Korea Unveils $313 Billion Green Financing Plan to Combat Climate Change." ESG News, 25 Mar. 2024, esgnews.com/south-korea-unveils-313-billion-green-financing-plan-to-combat-climate-change/. Accessed 4 Aug. 2024. Xu, Yi-Chong. Nuclear Energy Development in Asia: Problems and Prospects. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.