Target 100: Finding space for solar
Meeting the ambitious target will require drawing on every potential source of renewables, but South Korea already has several domestic industrial advantages. The country has world-class solar panels and battery industries, and is one the world’s leading exporters of high voltage transformers, a key bottleneck for many countries. Much of the investment required to reach 100GW would flow directly to these industries.
Offshore wind is the biggest single lever in the utility-scale pipeline, making up 11.3 GW of the 14.4 GW of wind planned through 2030. As foreign developers have pulled back from the market, domestic policy support will be critical to keeping these projects on schedule. As wind development generally takes more than four years, much of the rest of the gap will have to be met by solar. If Korea continued its 2020-2025 compound annual growth rate, utility-scale solar would increase by 9.5 GW and distributed solar by 31 GW. In practice, it will take a concerted policy effort to make sure this happens, with only 1.1 GW of utility scale projects currently tracked in GEM’s pipeline data. Recent success in approaches like the country’s “solar income village” programme build confidence that the target can be achieved.
To realise this ambition, costs must fall. Korean costs for wind and solar are significantly higher than global averages, due both to policy and to the so far relatively small scale of the industries. Nonetheless, recent IEEFA analysis shows that renewables in the country are competitive against LNG in many circumstances, particularly in the current crisis. If Korea can achieve global average costs of capital, IEEFA estimates that wind and solar could be built for $50/MWh and $55/MWh respectively.
A grid in flux
Large-scale solar deployment has been held back by a lack of flat, open land to develop on, but South Korea’s reservoirs could host nearly 11 GW of floating solar using high-efficiency panels. The Korea Rural Community Corporation has already targeted 3 GW in agricultural reservoirs by 2030.
Securing the capacity to generate 100GW of renewable energy is however only half the battle. South Korea must also build a grid capable of handling it. Power demand in the greater Seoul area is surging, driven by new semiconductor clusters and the AI boom, but the country’s major renewable energy hubs are concentrated at the other end of the country in Yeongnam and Honam. Existing transmission lines can carry just 4.5GW of electricity from Honam to the capital, creating a severe bottleneck between where clean power is generated and where it is needed most.
To close this gap, the government has designated a high-voltage direct current energy highway as a national priority. The plan extends beyond physical infrastructure, envisioning a comprehensive digital grid integrating AI-based demand forecasting, large-scale battery storage, and distributed energy resources. South Korea also has plans for up to 10GW of pumped hydro storage by 2030, and is actively expanding grid-scale battery capacity.
However, the major infrastructure projects involved are not slated for completion until the 2030s, leaving an urgent need for near-term solutions in the meantime. Non-wires alternatives must be leveraged to supplement or bypass traditional grid infrastructure, such as implementing Dynamic Line Ratings to maximise existing line capacity.
South Korea is generally well placed to produce these technologies. The country has advanced capabilities in grid-forming inverters, devices that actively stabilise voltage and frequency on electricity networks. It’s also at the forefront of vehicle-to-grid technology that allows electric vehicle batteries to feed power back into the grid during periods of high demand. But actually unlocking their deployment will require immediate market reforms to properly compensate flexibility, alongside urgent revisions to grid codes.
Grid bottlenecks are fast becoming one of the defining challenges of the energy transition worldwide. South Korea’s combination of industrial capability, policy ambition, and hard-won domestic experience means it has the potential not only to resolve its own constraints, but to export the solutions to dozens of countries facing the same problem. Enabling policy must now keep up to make the 100 GW target a reality.
