In October 2021, Korea announced its mid-century carbon mitigation target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, reaffirming its commitment by enhancing its 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). This study employs six energy-economic and integrated assessment models to explore net-zero emission pathways and strategies for Korea’s power sector, while assessing the associated costs and challenges. The findings underscore the complexity and urgency of this transition, with the power sector playing a pivotal role in balancing the dual challenges of rapidly growing electricity demand and full decarbonization. A shift toward a renewable-dominated power sector emerges as a robust strategy, though it poses unprecedented technological and economic challenges. Large-scale low-carbon technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and nuclear power, are identified as crucial solutions to reduce reliance on variable renewable energy sources and mitigate associated costs. Additionally, the study finds that current energy and climate policies are insufficient to meet the mid-century mitigation target, highlighting the urgent need for policy enhancements to bridge the gap and ensure the feasibility of Korea’s carbon neutrality goal.

In October 2021, Korea announced its mid-century carbon mitigation target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, reaffirming its commitment by enhancing its 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). This study employs six energy-economic and integrated assessment models to explore net-zero emission pathways and strategies for Korea’s power sector, while assessing the associated costs and challenges. The findings underscore the complexity and urgency of this transition, with the power sector playing a pivotal role in balancing the dual challenges of rapidly growing electricity demand and full decarbonization. A shift toward a renewable-dominated power sector emerges as a robust strategy, though it poses unprecedented technological and economic challenges. Large-scale low-carbon technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and nuclear power, are identified as crucial solutions to reduce reliance on variable renewable energy sources and mitigate associated costs. Additionally, the study finds that current energy and climate policies are insufficient to meet the mid-century mitigation target, highlighting the urgent need for policy enhancements to bridge the gap and ensure the feasibility of Korea’s carbon neutrality goal.

This study aims to evaluate the potential of solar power generation based on socioeconomic scenarios that integrate ecosystem conservation and renewable energy expansion. The spatial scope covers the entire territory of South Korea, where areas with ecological sensitivity, physical instability, and limited land developability were excluded as avoidance zones. Potentially available areas were classified into two land-use types degraded land and agricultural land and combined with three socioeconomic options: (a) minimum installation area, (b) setback distance from roads and residential areas, and (c) proximity to major demand centers. Based on these criteria, sixteen scenarios were developed to estimate potential solar capacity (GW) and electricity generation (TWh), while quantitatively assessing the sensitivity of solar potential to individual and combined policy-driven spatial constraints. The results show that the maximum potential generation reaches 411.6 TWh on degraded land and 955.0 TWh on agricultural land, which substantially exceeds South Korea’s national solar generation targets for 2030 and 2040 and represents a significant contribution toward 2050 carbon neutrality scenarios. When all spatial constraints are applied simultaneously, the potential decreases by approximately 67% for degraded land and 58% for agricultural land, highlighting the strong limiting effects of cumulative policy restrictions. The national average capacity factor is estimated at 14.35% for degraded land and 14.54% for agricultural land, indicating more stable supply conditions on agricultural land. Overall, the findings demonstrate that solar deployment outcomes are strongly shaped by spatial policy design rather than technical potential alone. This study provides a policy-relevant, spatially explicit framework to support sustainable solar siting strategies that balance ecosystem protection with long-term national energy goals in South Korea.

Municipal climate adaptation is increasingly described as evidence based. In practice, however, the evidence that shapes local adaptation planning often concentrates on standardised assessments, indicator dashboards, and other formats that are designed for comparability and reporting. These formats offer clear advantages, yet they can also narrow what is visible and discussable in decision making, especially when lived experiences and local knowledge do not readily translate into accepted evidential forms. This study starts from a simple question. Does a given adaptation evidence portfolio provide sufficiently representative coverage of what matters for local adaptation, or does it systematically privilege particular knowledge forms and contents.To address this question, this study operationalises epistemic justice as a diagnostic lens for adaptation evidence systems. The aim is not to judge whether a process is morally just or unjust. The aim is to make the structure of evidential recognition inspectable by asking what kinds of knowledge are treated as credible, what kinds of experiences become intelligible within prevailing categories and tools, and what institutional rules and incentives determine whether a claim can be recognised as evidence. Conceptually, the analysis is aligned with an adaptation decision making sequence that distinguishes understanding, planning, and managing. This alignment clarifies where evidence is produced, where it is mobilised, and where it is reviewed.Empirically, the protocol is demonstrated using materials from three municipalities in the Seoul Capital Area, South Korea. The dataset consists of two bundles of evidence artefacts. The first bundle includes formal evidence embedded in adaptation related plans and reports, standardised assessments, and survey based materials. The second bundle includes artefacts generated through participatory knowledge production activities conducted within a research and development programme, such as workshop outputs, participatory mapping products, and prioritisation records. Each artefact is coded using a structured spreadsheet workflow with a codebook, coding rules, and summary tables. The comparison focuses on expressive coverage rather than predictive accuracy. It examines how the portfolio represents who is affected, where impacts are situated, how causal narratives and constraints are articulated, and what kinds of actions are rendered feasible or infeasible.The contribution is a transferable diagnostic protocol that makes evidential bias and representational gaps empirically describable and comparable across cases. The study offers an approach for moving beyond general calls for more participation or more data by specifying how evidence systems can be examined and improved in municipal climate adaptation decision support.