Korea's AI Goals Face Energy Crisis

Korea is facing a major obstacle in achieving its goal of building new-generation semiconductors, physical artificial intelligence (AI), and data center industries: electricity. The government's demand assessment for three 'mega-projects' predicts that peak energy demand could be between 158.4 and 165 gigawatts (GW) by 2040. This represents an increase of approximately 27 GW from just four months ago - equivalent to the capacity of about 19 large 1.4-GW nuclear reactors. The scale of the increase should be a wake-up call. Korea's current all-time high demand is approximately 104 GW. In 14 years, demand could increase by about 50%. If the country's industrial goals do not provide the electricity needed to power factories, data centers, and the infrastructure behind them, they will mean very little. Building semiconductor clusters and attracting AI investments without securing energy supplies is like building engines without fuel.