South Korea sets out 10-year K-GX green transformation plan

South Korea presented a 10-year green transformation plan in Seoul on Oct. 7, with President Lee Jae Myung urging the country to help shape the global market for cleaner industries. The K-GX strategy links industrial policy to climate goals through proposed investment and targets for energy, manufacturing and transport. Its figures describe what the government intends to do through 2035, rather than spending or emissions cuts already delivered.

Lee told a meeting on the strategy that green transformation was central to South Korea’s competitiveness and to protecting lives and livelihoods from the climate crisis, Yonhap News Agency reported. He called for the country to become an architect of the green market. Representatives of major manufacturers and SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won, who also heads the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, attended the meeting.

What South Korea's K-GX plan proposes

The government describes K-GX as a 2026–2035 effort to combine progress towards carbon neutrality with economic growth. It says it aims to mobilise 1,000 trillion won in public finance and climate-related funding over that period. It also cited 220 trillion won in private investment for projects it calls K-GX signature projects. Both figures are stated investment ambitions; the announcement does not establish that the money has been spent.

Government materials set out three broad directions: developing green industries and technology, sharing the benefits and costs of the transition across regions and groups, and using public support and predictable policy to encourage private investment. The government says ministries, business associations and industry groups worked through a public-private task force on the strategy. The Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment presented it at a public briefing in Seoul.

Renewable energy, vehicles and industrial targets

The strategy sets a goal of deploying 100 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030. It also aims for electric and hydrogen vehicles to account for at least 70% of new vehicle sales by 2035. Those are targets for future deployment and sales, not measures of the current energy system or vehicle market.

The government identifies 10 priority green industries: electric vehicles, batteries, solar and wind power, small modular reactors, power equipment, power semiconductors, heat pumps, hydrogen, and carbon capture, utilisation and storage. Its materials also describe support for decarbonisation in five high-emissions industries, including steel and petrochemicals. That industrial focus matters in a country whose own climate filing describes its economy as heavily dependent on manufacturing.

How K-GX relates to South Korea's 2035 climate pledge

In its 2035 climate commitment submitted to the UN climate process, South Korea set a target to cut net greenhouse-gas emissions by 53% to 61% from 2018 levels. The filing says the upper end depends on stronger government effort, technological innovation and industrial transformation. K-GX is a new statement of the government’s approach to that transition, but the announcement alone cannot show whether its measures will be sufficient to reach the emissions target.

The climate filing also sets a goal for renewables to supply at least 30% of electricity generation by 2035, compared with around 9% in 2024, and envisages reducing coal-fired generation towards a 2040 phase-out. These measures put the new deployment goal in a wider climate-policy context. A target for installed renewable capacity and a target for the share of electricity generated measure different things, so one cannot be treated as proof of the other.

South Korea’s filing says the transition should protect affected workers and vulnerable groups. It identifies regions and industries connected to fossil-fuel power and internal-combustion vehicles as potentially affected. The K-GX strategy’s commitment to share the transition across regions and groups speaks to that challenge, although the available announcement does not set out a detailed timetable for every project or show how those protections will work in practice.

What remains to be measured

The 2035 climate filing says a further roadmap with annual and sectoral targets and implementation measures is to be developed, with progress reviewed systematically. That would provide a more detailed basis for judging delivery than the launch announcement alone. For now, the confirmed development is the government’s publication of a long-term plan, its stated investment ambitions and its future energy and transport targets; the amounts invested and results achieved remain to be established.