Neglectful of the financial wreckage that net-zero insurance policies have wrought within the U.Okay. and Germany, financial powerhouse South Korea has declared conflict on coal and liquified pure fuel (LNG) to pursue extra aggressive reductions of greenhouse fuel emissions. [some emphasis, links added]
Exhibiting a nationwide masochism, Seoul is abandoning the very fuels that constructed its financial system – and together with oil, your complete industrial world.
By 2038, the nation plans to slash LNG’s and coal’s mixed share of energy technology from 60% to twenty% whereas boosting the share of so-called renewable sources – like wind and photo voltaic – to 33% from immediately’s 9%.
Till November 2025, issues regarded extra sane as Seoul labored to safe its future. The federal government elevated investments in regional LNG ventures, expanded strategic petroleum reserves, and directed its power giants, SK Innovation and KOGAS, to safe pure fuel from Indonesia and Australia.
Since then, the federal government has changed that playbook with aims void of purpose.
The brand new plan requires a 40% discount in industrial emissions by 2030 (from 2018 ranges) and depends closely on unproven applied sciences comparable to hydrogen, wind, and photo voltaic. This isn’t a rational transition however quite reckless advantage signaling that places nationwide survival in danger.
Maybe probably the most harmful a part of Seoul’s new route is its projected substitute of LNG with hydrogen. Hydrogen and gasoline cells are to contribute 7% of the facility combine. This can be a delusion, as demonstrated by failed initiatives that stuffed 2025’s “hydrogen graveyard.”
Australia’s Central Queensland Hydrogen Challenge, a $14 billion flagship meant for exports, collapsed this 12 months after authorities help was pulled.
British multinational BP exited the large 26-gigawatt Australian Renewable Power Hub within the Pilbara. Power developer Fortescue, the loudest cheerleader for inexperienced hydrogen, walked away from initiatives in Arizona and its residence nation of Australia.
Germany’s LEAG undertaking, touted as considered one of Europe’s largest inexperienced power hubs, has been postponed indefinitely. ArcelorMittal’s inexperienced metal crops in Bremen have been shelved regardless of gives of billion-euro subsidies.
In South Korea, the results of such foolishness will likely be misplaced jobs and shuttered factories. Greater than 30% of South Korea’s gross home product comes from its industrial sector, nearly double that of the U.Okay.
The making of metal, petrochemicals, and semiconductors requires fixed, secure energy, which weather-dependent wind and photo voltaic can’t present.
Introducing “inexperienced” power into energy grids forces industries to pay the extra prices of backup electrical energy sources or, worse, to curtail operations at factories. We already understand how this film ends, having watched it play out in Europe.
Germany, the continent’s mannequin of inexperienced advantage, finds itself deindustrializing – at a price of 4.5% in 2024, on par with a multi-year downward pattern.
The identical 12 months, the U.Okay.’s industrial power consumption fell by 1.2% from 2023 to file what the federal government notes was “the bottom industrial consumption for over 50 years.”
The Financial institution of England has warned, “Web zero insurance policies are slowing the worldwide financial system.” The World Financial institution predicts that “the 2020s would be the weakest decade for international development since its information started within the Sixties.
Whether or not this decline is by design or daft incompetence, the results are predictable. In a renewables-dominated Korean grid, bulk materials industries like POSCO’s metal mills and Lotte’s petrochemical crops could possibly be the primary casualties, competing as they do on razor-thin margins.
The approval of the Saeul-3 nuclear reactor in South Korea and the advance of small modular reactors are constructive indicators. Nuclear energy is the one non-fossil supply that gives the power density and reliability that an industrial financial system wants.
However let’s be actual: Nuclear crops can’t be put into operation in enough numbers quick sufficient to interchange the large gap the federal government is digging by slashing the usage of fossil fuels.
It’s not too late to reverse course. South Korea grew to become the “Miracle on the Han River” by ignoring ideological fads and specializing in ruthless financial effectivity.
The query Seoul should reply is whether or not it should govern for its residents or give up its sovereignty to a world pseudo-scientific collaboration of ideologues that advantages neither employees nor producers.
Nor, for that matter, the planet the cult purports to be saving.
Prime picture of Seoul, South Korea, by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash
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