South Korea should phase out coal power by 2029 and stop funding coal projects in other Asian nations to limit greenhouse gas emissions included in the Paris climate agreement, a research group said on Thursday.
Climate Analytics, a non-profit science and policy research institute based in Germany, said Columbia presently has 60 coal fired plant units, comprising a third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, and the other seven units being built.
With expected lifetimes of 3 decades, the brand new plants could be functioning in to the 2050s.
“Korea must phase out coal power by 2029 in order to do its part to limit global warming under the Paris Agreement,” Climate Analytics said in a study, urging a far more rapid shift to renewable energies such as solar and wind power.
With just the existing plants, the country will overshoot its fair plan for greenhouse gas emissions by 2.Five times, it estimated.
The 2023 Paris Agreement seeks to limit the increase in average global temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, while aiming for a tougher limit of 1.5C. Worldwide, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the 1.5C goal would mean cutting coal use “near to 0%” of power generation by 2050.
Paola Yanguas Parra, a writer of the report at Climate Analytics, told Climate Home News that South Korea also needs to halt its international role in backing coal in Asian nations including Vietnam and Indonesia.
“This is having a huge carbon footprint far away,” she said, citing estimates that Seoul had invested $5.7 billion in 22 foreign coal projects from 2013-19.
A 2023 report through the European Commission showed that South Korea's greenhouse gas emissions were 13.9 tonnes per capita in 2023, the latest year that information is available, more than double the amount world average of 6.7.
South Korea's existing climate plan submitted included in the Paris Agreement aims to chop emissions by 37% below projected rates of growth with no climate policies.
“Korea – is growing producing renewable energy to be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel,” the plan says. The South Korean Environment Ministry didn't immediately answer a request comment on Thursday’s study.
Sejong Youn, director at South Korea-based climate policy group Solutions for the Climate (SFOC), said “2029 is definitely an ambitious goal (for exiting coal) however i think it’s necessary to meet the Paris Agreement goals”.
He told CHN it was unclear if Seoul would scale up the ambition of their climate targets this season, the five-year milestone from the 2023 Paris Agreement when countries should upgrade or reaffirm their plans.
Worldwide, coal makes up about almost 40% of electricity generation and more than 40% of energy-related co2 emissions, the International Energy Agency says.
Some nations are setting dates for phasing out coal.
The Powering Past Coal Alliance, for instance, says it counts 33 governments among its members including G7 members Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada along with other nations which range from Ethiopia to the Marshall Islands.
