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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea is promising to shrink its reliance on coal power as part of its pledge to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change, but that ambition is at odds with the Trump administration’s push for more U.S. natural gas exports.
At recent United Nations climate talks, South Korea’s new Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment announced plans to retire most of the country’s coal-fired power plants by 2040 and to at least halve its carbon emissions by 2035.
Experts say this shows that South Korea, a major coal importer with one of the world’s largest fleets of coal plants, wants to speed up its renewable energy transition, which lags behind its neighbors and global averages.
But as part of trade deals with President Donald Trump, Seoul is raising imports of U.S. liquefied natural gas, or LNG. Climate activists contend such plans may conflict with the country’s pledges to help curb climate change and could lock South Korea into a fossil fuel-dependent future.
Talks are underway for South Korea to invest $350 billion in U.S. projects and purchase up to $100 billion worth of U.S. energy products, including LNG, a natural gas cooled to liquid form for easy storage and travel. It burns cleaner than coal, but still causes planet-warming emissions, especially of methane.
South Korea’s overall LNG imports may not increase if it offsets purchases of more U.S. natural gas by reducing imports from other sources such as Australia and the Middle East.
Still, it’s unclear how South Korea will “manage and consolidate all this somehow contradictory planning regarding its energy sector,” said Michelle Kim, an energy specialist for the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
South Korea’s liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who won a snap election in June, campaigned for stronger climate commitments. They had softened under his conservative predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol, who was ousted after a short-lived martial law declaration.
“As the global temperature rises, we all need to responsibly take climate action and Korea will have a stronger sense of responsibility in tackling the climate crisis,” Kim Sung-hwan, the inaugural Minister of Climate, Energy and Environment, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
South Korea’s goal to cut carbon emissions by 53% to 61% of its 2018 level, fell short of climate activists’ expectations. Business lobbies representing major manufacturers had proposed a 48% emissions reduction target.
“This range presents an effort by the government to accommodate two very different ways of thinking about the economic and climate future of the nation,” said Joojin Kim of the Seoul-based advocacy group, Solutions for Our Climate.
The South Korean government made the ambitious commitment to increase its clean energy use even after Trump’s sweeping ‘America First’ tariffs spurred energy negotiations between Seoul and Washington.
As part of its broader efforts to avoid higher tariffs, South Korea offered to import more LNG from the U.S., but the final trade deal has not been announced.
The agreement still under negotiation could last between three to 10 years, according to industry analysis and U.S. federal documents. Depending on the deal’s duration, South Korea may import between 3 million to 9 million tons of American LNG a year.
LNG made up almost a fifth of South Korea’s total energy supply last year, according to the International Energy Agency, or IEA. The government’s target was to cut that to 10.6% by 2038.
South Korea risks its climate goals if the pending trade deal increases the total volume of imported LNG, which will likely lead to an oversupply issue and the excess burning of gas to justify the deal, said Insung Lee, with Greenpeace in Seoul.
“If we just replace coal plants with LNG, that means the coal exit actually doesn’t lead to a green transition and merely shifts Korea’s addiction from coal to gas, which undermines the whole spirit of climate action,” Lee said.
Renewable energy generated 7% of South Korea’s domestic power in 2022, according to the IEA. South Korean government data show that had increased to 10.5% last year, still one of the lowest levels among leading economies.
Japan, with an economy more than twice as big, generates 21% of its power from renewable sources. Spain, whose economy is about the same size as South Korea’s, gets 42% of its power from renewable sources.
Clean energy provided about 30% of global electricity production in 2023.
Nuclear power produces a major share of South Korea’s domestic energy, with government data showing that nuclear sources accounted for 31% of total electricity generation last year.
“We will transition into a new energy system that focuses on renewables and nuclear, while phasing out coal,” said Kim, the energy minister. He said South Korea will use LNG as a “complementary or emergency energy source” to make up for irregularities in renewable energy supplies.
In early December, South Korea set another goal of boosting its offshore wind power capacity to 4 gigawatts, about 10 times the current level.
South Korean companies that don’t cut back on carbon emissions may find that to be a competitive disadvantage, said Michelle Kim of the IEEFA.
Many global industries, including shipping and aviation, face pressure to reduce their emissions by providing incentives for low emitters and creating deterrents for high ones, she said.
“This is a lot of risk,” she said. “South Korea needs to speed up renewable energy deployment and come out from high dependency on the fossil fuel industry.”
At last month’s climate talks, South Korea joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a group of businesses, organizations and governments promoting the green energy transition.
That’s mainly a symbolic move, said Bruce Douglas, with the Global Renewables Alliance. “But it signifies very clear government intention to move away from fossil fuels and towards clean power.”
South Korea imports virtually all its coal, largely from Australia, Indonesia and Russia, and the switch to renewables is bound to impact regional markets.
The pledge to retire 40 of South Korea’s 61 coal sites by 2040 may be “an enforced transition” for coal exporters in the Asia-Pacific region, said James Bowen, with Climate Analytics. “It’s a reality that they’re going to have to face this downturn in the market.”
“The writing’s on the wall,” Bowen said. “One of the biggest importers in the world, one of the biggest customers, is starting to move away from coal.”
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