Electric utility licensing under the Electric Utility Act is a prerequisite for electricity generation businesses to participate in the power market. While the Act applies to all generation sources, it has historically been designed around conventional power generation and legacy market structures rather than renewable energy such as offshore wind. As a result, permitting procedures originally developed for conventional power plants have been applied to renewable energy projects, leading to various structural challenges. In response, the licensing framework has undergone continuous amendments since 2014.

Since 2014, the concept of “community acceptance” has been increasingly incorporated into the legal and regulatory framework governing electric utility licensing. This shift was driven by a growing number of projects that failed to reach completion after obtaining licenses, with low community acceptance identified as a major barrier—particularly for offshore wind. However, several key issues have emerged in relation to how community acceptance is defined and applied.

• First, renewable energy projects such as offshore wind are uniquely required to conduct advance community consultation, raising concerns about unequal treatment under the law.

• Second, inconsistencies exist between the Electricity Regulatory Commission’s official position—stating that community acceptance should be addressed after licensing—and the actual outcomes of legislative amendments and licensing reviews, where acceptance has become a decisive factor.

• Third, although a significant share of suspended offshore wind licensing cases cite community acceptance or local government opinions as the reason, acceptance is not formally defined as a licensing criterion in the relevant legislation. This has led to confusion, particularly due to ambiguity in the interpretation of the term “acceptance” (suyong), which may refer either to utilization (受用) or social acceptance (受容). Fourth, differing interpretations among permitting authorities and local governments have resulted in inconsistent identification of stakeholders and varying scopes of community consultation, further undermining predictability in the licensing process.

Under the current system, site selection is effectively determined at the stage of installing wind measurement equipment—prior to the licensing process. Although multiple legal amendments have attempted to strengthen community acceptance at the licensing stage, the fundamental sequencing of procedures remains unchanged, limiting their effectiveness. A more fundamental reform of the licensing framework is therefore required.

Such reform is anticipated under the Special Act on the Promotion of Offshore Wind Power and Industrial Development, enacted in March 2025, which institutionalizes stakeholder engagement from the site selection stage. However, as the current system will remain in place for a three-year transition period, interim measures are necessary. These include clearly defining the scope of stakeholders subject to consultation and establishing standardized guidelines for conducting community engagement and preparing local government opinion letters, in order to enhance the credibility and predictability of the system.

Efforts to improve the licensing framework must be grounded in an accurate understanding of the underlying issues. Despite multiple amendments, the intended goal of enhancing community acceptance has not been fully achieved, largely due to structural limitations in the existing system. Without establishing a legal framework tailored to the characteristics of renewable energy, the transition to a clean energy system risks being delayed by institutional misalignment.