SEOUL: South Korea revised down its 2030 targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the industrial sector on Tuesday, but it maintained its national goal of cutting emissions by 40 per cent of 2018 levels in what it called a reasonable adjustment.
This is the first annual and sectoral emissions reduction targets put forward by President Yoon Suk Yeol. South Korea, one of the world's most fossil-fuel reliant economies, has tried to reach carbon neutrality by the year 2050.
The Industrial sector will have to reduce emissions by 11.4 per cent from the 2018 levels by 2030, compared to the 14.5 per cent set in late 2021, according to the Presidential Commission on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth.
It said that the gap will be filled by switching more energy sources to renewables and making more reductions overseas.
The country wants to reduce emissions by 45.9 per cent from 2018 levels by 2030, compared to the previous target of 44.4 per cent.
The commission said in a statement that we've relaxed industrial reduction targets in light of realistic domestic conditions, including raw material supply and technology prospects.
The target was raised to reduce greenhouse gases through a balanced energy mix between nuclear power and renewables, and to speed up the shift to clean energy such as solar and hydrogen. South Korea plans to increase nuclear energy to 32.4 per cent of the total power production by 2030, a rise from 27.4 per cent in 2021, and renewables to at least 21.6 per cent of power output from 7.5 per cent, according to the commission.
Yoon, who took office in May, has scrapped his predecessor's drive to phase out nuclear energy and pledged to expand it to more than 30 per cent of the energy mix.
South Korea supplies more than 40 per cent of its electricity from coal and has pledged to halve the portion by 2030, but environmental groups including Greenpeace have said the goals are too low and criticised its plans to build more coal-fired plants.