South Korea's pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050

As part of its plan for recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, South Korea has launched its own Green New Deal. Announced in July 2020, this initiative will invest €54.3 billion mostly for enabling a shift to green infrastructure, low-carbon and decentralised energy, for spurring innovation in green industry and for creating 659 000 jobs. The plan will also support the commercial development of technology for large-scale carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS). In October 2020, South Korea's President, Moon Jae-in, declared that the country would aim to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. He vowed to end dependence on coal and replace it with renewables as part of the Green New Deal. In December 2020, the government adopted a carbon-neutral strategy to chart a path towards a sustainable and green society. This strategy will support innovative climate technologies that will help South Korea achieve carbon neutrality and set a global example of success in accomplishing this goal. In December 2020, Seoul updated its nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement. The target remains unchanged: by 2030, South Korea is to reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions by 24.4 % compared to 2017 levels. Aware of criticism about the country's weak ambition regarding emissions reduction, in May 2021 Moon Jae-in declared that a more ambitious target would be announced at the COP26 conference on climate change in Glasgow in November. Despite the relatively low levels of funding that South Korea has allocated to developing countries, it is taking ambitious action to demonstrate international leadership on climate change: in May 2021, it hosted the P4G summit focused on public–private partnerships, which yielded the Seoul Declaration. Climate change provisions in the EU–South Korea framework agreement highlight largely unused potential for cooperation; so far, these provisions have only been used for channelling EU support to Seoul's emissions trading scheme, for running a three-year EU-Korea climate action project and for holding the meetings of the joint working group on energy, environment and climate change.