Troy Stangarone

Last month, Britain closed its last coal power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar. As the nation that built the world's first coal power plant in 1882, Britain's decision to phase out coal brings a degree of symmetry to the world's efforts to transition to cleaner fuels. It also makes Britain a test case for countries like Korea on how to transition from coal to cleaner fuels and eventually to carbon neutrality.

Britain's shift from coal power generation has been relatively swift. In 2012, coal accounted for 39 percent of Britain's power generation. In just eight years, it had fallen to 2 percent of Britain's overall power mix. Eliminating the final 2 percent took time, but Britain was able to eliminate the use of coal in power generation in 12 years.

As a result, it has reduced emissions faster than any other Group of Seven country. Since 2012, it has cut CO2 emissions by 35 percent based on emissions data from Our World in Data. Additionally, according to data from the British government, emissions declined by 50 percent between 1990 and 2022. To put this decline in context, Carbon Brief estimates that Britain's emissions last year were their lowest since 1879.

In shifting away from coal, Britain turned to a mixture of wind and bio energy, along with some additional gas power generation in the short term. Renewables, however, now account for 40 percent of the country's energy mix, up from 7 percent in 2010. To remove carbon completely from its power generation, it plans to increase wind, solar and nuclear power.

As a transition, Britain's experience already provides some lessons and potential challenges. Markets respond to prices and the use of carbon pricing made coal uncompetitive with renewables and gas. It has also raised energy prices. The process has also not moved in sync. Transmission lines to move renewable power from places like the North Sea to other parts of Britain are still needed, along with more and better industrial batteries to store power for when there are drops in renewable power. But renewable power can also be deployed quickly.

Could Korea make a relatively quick transition away from coal like Britain? In theory, some of the pieces are in place. At COP26, Korea signed the Coal Exit pledge. The pledge committed countries to phase out coal power generation in the 2030s or 2040s. But the reality is that Britain's experience is more likely to serve as a guide to speeding up the phasing out of coal power rather than meeting Britain's pace.

Under the 10th Basic Electricity Plan Korea will reduce its use of coal from 33 percent of power generation today to 19.7 percent in 2030. As part of this process, Korea will shut down 17 coal plants by 2030 and covert an additional 28 to burn gas by 2036. However, there is no plan for 13 remaining plants and a quicker phase out of coal would be needed than is currently in place.

Learning from Britain's rapid expansion of renewables could help Korea speed up its own process. Under current plans, renewables would only grow to 21.6 percent of Korea's power generation by 2030 from slightly less than 10 percent in 2023. Korea has more solar potential than Britain, according to the World Bank, while both countries have significant offshore wind potential. Draft plans would triple wind and solar power by 2038, but that will require follow through by subsequent administrations.

Reducing emissions will be harder for Korea due to its more intense manufacturing economy, which produced 60 percent more manufactured goods than Britain in 2022. However, on the whole, Britain is producing a larger economy with fewer emissions than Korea.

Eliminating coal more quickly would benefit Korea's efforts to reduce emissions and meet its goals of reducing carbon emissions by 40 percent from 2018 levels by 2030. Emissions have begun to decline in recent years but are only 10 percent below 2018 levels. Meeting Korea's goal would require cutting emissions by roughly 33 million metric tons per year for the rest of the decade.

Britain and other countries' experience moving swiftly to reduce emissions can provide insights for Korea's own phase-out of coal, but Korea also has a role to play in supporting these transitions. As the world looks to reduce its dependence on China and speed up its transition, Korean firms can help to supply critical clean technologies while joint research could help to improve battery technology. In addition to helping to guide Korea's own energy transition, Britain and other countries could help spur the transition to the next wave of Korean exports.

Troy Stangarone is the director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy and the deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.