South Korea Targets 35% Renewable Heat Share by 2035 Amid Industry Pushback

South Korea’s Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment unveiled a Heat Energy Innovation Strategy in April 2026, setting out plans to raise the renewable heat share from a current 3.6% to 15% by 2030 and 35% by 2035. With fossil fuels supplying approximately 96% of South Korea’s heat today, the strategy rests on two pillars: electrifying heat demand in buildings and industrial processes, and greening supply through waste-heat recovery and renewables expansion. Physical targets include extending a national district-heating pipeline network to 9,000 km across five regions and deploying 3.5 million heat pumps, supplemented by Power-to-Heat (P2H) sector coupling to convert surplus renewable electricity into usable heat.

The government intends to pass a Heat Energy Management and Decarbonization Promotion Act within 2026, providing a legal basis for a Renewable Heat Obligation (RHO) that would require large suppliers and consumers to source or use prescribed shares of renewable heat. New district-energy licences would be conditioned on heat pumps or waste heat as baseload, with combined heat and power (CHP) capacity minimised and routed into the electricity capacity-market framework. Compliance flexibility through trading of Heat Renewable Energy Certificates (HREC)and provisions for banking and borrowing are envisaged, but are described in the article as still years from practical implementation.

E2NEWS reports the strategy meeting sustained resistance across the energy sector. Critics argue that mandatory clean-heat supply targets are being set before viable CHP replacements or a functioning renewable-heat certification and subsidy regime are in place, leaving operators to pass higher costs to consumers. Long-distance heat transport losses raise doubts about the economics of a 9,000 km pipeline build-out, and the heat-pump rollout target is characterised as aspirational given current electricity tariff structures ill-suited to large-scale electrothermal use. City gas companies and district heating operators view the trajectory as a direct threat to their business models, while delays in CHP licensing for new urban developments are generating near-term supply uncertainty. Energy specialists quoted in the piece call for differential subsidies to bridge the renewable-versus-LNG cost gap, dedicated electricity tariff categories for heat production, and a pragmatic “bridge strategy” that retains CHP in parallel while hydrogen and renewable heat infrastructure is gradually built out.