South Korean lawmakers have proposed a new bill to phase out all coal-fired power plants between 2030 and 2035, seeking to bring the country’s coal exit forward from the 2040 timeline that the government announced last week at the COP30 climate conference.
The initiative follows environment minister Kim Sung-hwan’s declaration at COP30 that South Korea, which operates the world’s seventh-largest coal fleet, would stop building new unabated coal plants and gradually retire existing ones. Out of the country’s 61 coal-fired power plants, 40 are already scheduled to close by 2040, Kim told delegates in Belém.
This had been announced in tandem with Seoul formally joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), a coalition of more than 180 governments, companies and organisations committed to transitioning from unabated coal to clean energy.
Back in Seoul, opposition lawmakers are now pushing to lock in an earlier, legally binding timetable.
“The government has signalled its intention to phase out coal through its 2040 target and by joining the PPCA, but more proactive, early phase-out policies aligned with international trends and carbon neutrality goals are needed,” said Kim Jeong-ho, one of the lawmakers who proposed the bill that would require all coal plants to shut down between 2030 and 2035, with the exact schedule to be finalised by a new “Coal Phase-out Committee”.
The lawmakers said their aim was to create “a legal foundation that brings forward the coal phase-out timeline and ensures workers and local communities are not left behind, so that the nation can address the climate crisis and protect people’s lives”.
The proposed law also seeks to guarantee the participation of power plant workers and local residents in the transition process through the Coal Phase-out Committee. It defines the responsibility of central and local governments to provide employment guarantees, job transfers and retraining, as well as support for shifting coal sites and workers into renewable energy.
“It is now time to make the shutdown of coal power a matter of law, not simply a declaration,” another lawmaker Seo Wang-jin said, calling the bill “a promise to safeguard the rights of future generations and respond responsibly to the climate crisis”.
The proposed bill was drafted in consultation with civil society and labour groups, including the Coalition for the Enactment of the Coal Phase-out Law, a network of 75 organisations spanning environmental NGOs, local community groups, climate movements, trade unions and progressive parties. The bill must still clear committee review and a plenary vote before it can become law.
The lawmakers’ move came as international pressure for a faster coal exit mounts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) have warned that the 1.5°C goal cannot be met without rapid reductions in coal power.
Separately, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says advanced economies need to end coal generation by 2030, while the G7 has pledged to phase out coal by 2035. Climate research group Climate Analytics has estimated that South Korea would have to retire coal completely by 2029 to remain aligned with the Paris Agreement.
At COP30, the climate minister Kim said Seoul was “determined to foster renewable energy industries including wind, solar, battery energy storage systems (BESS) and the electricity grid,” noting that solar and wind currently make up less than 10 per cent of the country’s power mix.
South Korea recently announced a 2035 target to halve emissions from 2018 levels and is developing policies for a “more efficient power mix” in which renewables take a large share, with nuclear as a complementary source and gas as an emergency backup. Kim also highlighted up to US$20 million in low-interest loans pledged for greenhouse gas reduction projects.
But South Korean climate advocates say more is needed beyond coal. Public finance from South Korea still ranks among the world’s second-largest sources of fossil fuel funding, channelling about US$10 billion a year into oil and gas, according to non-profit Solutions for Our Climate. The group’s latest analysis suggests the shift to clean energy could double jobs and add more than US$7 trillion in economic value by 2035.
