Korea industry ministry rejects report that big tech has abandoned net zero

The industry ministry said that global big tech companies have not abandoned their carbon neutrality targets, correcting a report that quoted the minister as saying they had "effectively given up or postponed" them.

In a statement responding to an OhmyNews article published Oct. 13, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said the remark by Minister Kim Jung-kwan during a parliamentary audit was meant to describe the surge in new fossil-fuel generation being built to serve artificial intelligence data centers. "There are no cases of semiconductor-related big tech companies giving up on carbon neutrality," the ministry said, adding that they are instead moving their targets forward or pressing suppliers to meet them.

Of 378 gigawatts of gas-fired power plants under development or planned in the United States in the first half of 2026, half -- 179 gigawatts -- is directly linked to big tech data centers, according to figures compiled by Global Energy Monitor and reported by OilPrice in August 2026.

The OhmyNews article, headlined "A time bomb before semiconductors... the minister's remarks that made listeners doubt their ears," carried the subheading that global big tech companies had abandoned or postponed carbon neutrality.