An Asia Economy column in its Energy Odyssey series asks why Meta left RE100 and examines the AI data center power paradox.

Energy has become more important than ever amid supply chain disruptions caused by the recent Middle East war and the government's mega-projects. South Korea faces the difficult task of achieving energy security, carbon neutrality, and economic growth at the same time, while relying on imports for most of its primary energy. In this series, reporters covering energy issues on the ground will examine a range of current challenges and seek solutions.

*Artist's rendering of the National AI Computing Center.*

Solaseado, a future energy city being developed across 20,899,330 square meters (about 6.32 million pyeong) in Guseong-ri, Sani-myeon, Haenam County, South Jeolla Province, is the site of the National AI Computing Center, where a groundbreaking ceremony was held in August. The plan is to build a national AI computing hub to support the training and research of ultra-large AI models by installing 15,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) by 2028. In effect, it will be an AI data center operated by the government.

One reason the National AI Computing Center is being built in Solaseado is the abundance of nearby renewable energy. Solaseado is home to South Korea's largest solar power complex, with 98 megawatts (MW) of solar power generation capacity and a 306-megawatt-hour (MWh) energy storage system (ESS) on a site of about 1.58 million square meters (about 480,000 pyeong). Haenam is making every effort to have Solaseado designated as an RE100 national industrial complex, capitalizing on these strengths.

RE100 is a term that symbolically represents the Lee Jae-myung government's policy of expanding renewable energy. RE100 is a global campaign led by the Climate Group, a British nonprofit organization, under which companies pledge to source 100% of the electricity they use from renewable energy.

Major big tech companies, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft (MS), are members. As of 2026, 36 South Korean companies, including Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, Hyundai Motor, and LG Energy Solution, are participating as RE100 members.

*A panoramic view of the Haenam solar power plant.*

Separately from the global campaign, the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment is implementing the K-RE100 policy, which aims to raise the share of renewable energy used by public institutions to 60% by 2030. Starting this year, the ministry plans to assess the K-RE100 performance of 88 public institutions subject to management evaluations and reflect the results in their evaluation indicators.

Institutions and companies participating in RE100 can certify their compliance through various means, including generating renewable energy themselves, power purchase agreements (PPAs), purchasing renewable energy certificates (RECs), and green tariffs.

So how much of its electricity needs can the National AI Computing Center being built in Haenam's Solaseado, one of South Korea's most renewable-energy-rich areas, meet through RE100?

**Can Haenam's National AI Data Center Achieve RE100?**

The National AI Computing Center is scheduled to be built with a capacity of 40 MW in its first phase. This means it will consume 40 MW of electricity per hour, requiring 960 MWh to operate for 24 hours a day.

Because the National AI Computing Center is located within the Solaseado complex, it can comply with RE100 through a direct PPA. This means signing a power purchase agreement directly with a power generator without using the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) grid.

Even if the center uses all the electricity from Solaseado's 98 MW solar power plant and 306 MWh ESS through a direct PPA, the supply would meet its needs for only about eight hours.

Ultimately, the center has no choice but to use the KEPCO grid rather than a direct PPA. Oh Taewon, head of the Korea AI Computing Center Co., Ltd. (KOACC), a joint venture established to build and operate the center, said, "We plan to connect to KEPCO's power grid first and receive electricity through it. Since the project is still in its early stages, we have not yet decided on the specific methods the center will use to obtain renewable electricity." Two years remain until the center's scheduled completion in 2028.

The National AI Computing Center said that receiving electricity through the KEPCO grid does not mean it will not use renewable energy at all. Oh said, "Although the electricity will not come directly from renewable sources, you can think of it as the abundant renewable energy produced in the region being supplied indirectly through the KEPCO grid. In the future, we could also consider using distributed energy or receiving renewable electricity directly."

Samsung SDS, NAVER Cloud, Samsung C&T, Kakao, Samsung Electronics, Clush, KT, Jeonnam-Gwangju Special Self-Governing City, and Seonamhaean Enterprise City Development are participating in a consortium for the National AI Computing Center project. At the end of June, Samsung Group announced, as part of the government's mega-projects, that Samsung SDS would invest 17 trillion won to build a 210 MW AI data center in Solaseado. This would make it more than five times larger than the current plan.

As the scale of AI data centers grows, so does the amount of electricity they need. Haenam's Solaseado plans to build a 400 MW solar power complex, the largest in South Korea on a single site, by 2028, using 4.79 million square meters of unused land, including reclaimed land affected by saltwater. Of this capacity, 10 MW will be developed as agrivoltaics.

*Climate, Energy and Environment Minister Kim Seonghwan takes part in a groundbreaking ceremony for a solar power facility at a renewable energy complex in Haenam County, Jeonnam-Gwangju, announcing the start of construction on the country's largest single-site solar power facility, with a capacity of 400 MW. August 7, 2026.*

Expanding renewable energy alone will not immediately make it possible to supply power to AI data centers. Infrastructure such as ESSs, which can compensate for intermittency, must also be built, and this inevitably adds to the cost.

Companies will see little reason to use renewable energy if it is expensive. Another key question is whether renewable energy alone can provide a stable electricity supply around the clock.

**What Happened When Meta Left RE100?**

As AI data center construction spreads around the world, securing electricity is emerging as a bottleneck. Big tech companies, which have joined the RE100 campaign to promote carbon neutrality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are also facing a dilemma in the age of AI. They believe renewable energy alone cannot provide enough electricity to run large-scale AI data centers, and are revising their strategies.

A prominent example is Meta, the parent company of Facebook. In July, Meta acknowledged that it was no longer an RE100 member. Meta joined RE100 in 2016, when it was still Facebook, and said it had achieved RE100 in 2021.

Companies do not have to receive renewable energy such as solar or wind power directly to achieve RE100. They can demonstrate their use of renewable energy through indirect methods, such as purchasing RECs, signing PPAs, or using green tariffs.

In practice, companies receive electricity from a grid where it is impossible to determine where the electricity was generated. However, if they match their annual electricity consumption with renewable energy through REC purchases or PPAs, they are recognized as having achieved RE100. For example, a company that uses 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity annually can be recognized as having achieved RE100 if it purchases RECs equivalent to 1 GWh or signs an agreement with a wind farm.

However, Meta withdrew from RE100 after it could no longer meet the requirement to use 100% renewable energy annually, even through this "RE100 matching" approach. It increased its investment in gas-fired power plants to provide a stable and rapid electricity supply to its AI data centers, making it difficult to achieve RE100.

Meta is building Hyperion, a massive data center in Louisiana. To supply the facility with electricity, it is investing in 10 natural gas power plants with a combined capacity of 7.5 gigawatts (GW). Meta also plans to receive electricity from a 200 MW gas-fired power plant under construction in Ohio.

**U.S. Big Tech Companies Diversify Their Power Sources**

Meta is not alone. U.S. big tech companies are also investing in gas-fired power plants and signing purchase agreements for large-scale nuclear power plants and small modular reactors (SMRs) to supply electricity to their AI data