The Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy of South Korea has announced the sanctioning of the purchase of electricity from renewable sources by industrial and general electric consumers as part of the RE100 initiative. The parties must register at the Korea Energy Agency and the electricity will be procured through self-generation, green premium system, third party power purchase agreement, or the purchase of renewable energy certificates. Under South Korea’s RE100 initiative, the participants will be recognised for reducing greenhouse emissions under updated guidelines which are to be released by the country’s Ministry of Environment. Further, the government will also prepare supporting a framework to deploy more renewable energy. The country’s announcement to push towards RE100 is expected to strengthen domestic companies’ global competitiveness further and accelerate the energy transition.
In October 2020, South Korea announced would become carbon-neutral by 2050 and that $7.06 billion had been invested in the Green New Deal to combat the climate change crisis. Under the RE 100 initiative, 140 multinational companies together to fight climate change so far.
The SK Group is South Korea’s third-largest conglomerate which includes SK Holdings, SK Telecom, SK Hynix, SKC, SK Materials, and SK Siltron and recently, it joined the RE100 initiative. These companies comprise chip manufacturing, chemicals and bio-pharmacy, and telecommunications industries and have an electricity demand of over 31 TW per year which is approximately 9 per cent of South Korea’s electricity use.