South Korea’s new agrivoltaics law sets 30-year permit ceiling
South Korea has enacted its first dedicated agrivoltaics law, extending the maximum project period to 30 years from a previously reported 23-year framework, but key technical requirements remain undecided pending additional regulations.
outh Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) said this week that the country has issued a new agrivoltaics law, set to take effect Dec. 17, following the bill’s passage through the National Assembly in May.
The law creates the country’s first dedicated legal framework for combining solar generation with continued agricultural production. MAFRA is responsible for implementing the act.
The enacted statute sets a maximum project period of up to 30 years, which is an increase from the 23-year framework reported when the bill passed the National Assembly.
The precise duration granted to any individual project will be determined by local authorities under a future presidential decree, according to ministry statements. The 30-year ceiling replaces South Korea’s previous eight-year temporary land-use permit regime, which researchers had identified as a barrier to project financing.
The law restricts eligibility to operate an agrivoltaic project to three categories. The first is local farmers who have continuously resided in the relevant area and can demonstrate at least three years of agricultural management. The second is resident-participation cooperatives formed by at least 10 local residents. The third is qualifying agricultural corporations operating within designated renewable energy zones.
The law does not necessarily bar all forms of external capital or financing arrangements – it specifically restricts who may hold the licensed project-operator status. Eligible farmland is limited to land outside Agricultural Promotion Zones, or land within those zones that has been separately designated a Renewable Energy Zone, a designation established under South Korea’s framework on the restructuring of rural spaces.
The nonprofit group Solutions for Our Climate said in May that Agricultural Promotion Zones cover approximately 47% of South Korea’s total farmland, a figure drawn from external land-use data rather than the statute itself. The enacted law does not restate or revise that estimate; it only sets the legal pathway by which land in such zones could become eligible.
The law requires project operators to continue agricultural production every year under an approved farming plan, and imposes maintenance and record-keeping obligations on the underlying solar equipment. But the legislation leaves the technical details to a presidential decree that hasn’t been issued yet – things like exact limits on shading, how tall structures can be, spacing between supports.
What the law itself says now appears to be narrower in scope. Ultimately, local authorities have to check that a project’s structure does not block farm machinery or cut off too much sunlight.
Policy and industry materials have floated a shading limit near 30%, minimum structure heights around 2.5 meters and support spacing near 4 meters as likely benchmarks, though none of these figures are confirmed requirements of the enacted law.
South Korea now joins a small group of countries with dedicated agrivoltaics legislation. France’s 2023 APER law set a national legal definition for agrivoltaics, including a requirement that yields on covered land stay at roughly 90% of a reference plot, but questions remain in France over how agrivoltaic project revenues are shared with local communities.
Italy’s framework also requires sites to maintain at least 80% of standard agricultural output, but its thresholds differ from South Korea’s. Japan, meanwhile, has run a national agrivoltaics guidance framework since 2021, but its rules stop short of a dedicated statute.
The new South Korean law arrives as the country moves to expand financial support for dual-use solar. MAFRA has proposed nearly doubling government funding for factory rooftop solar and agrivoltaics to KRW 1.8 trillion ($1.3 billion) in a newly issued 2027 budget, and the country’s largest single-site solar project under development, the Haenam solar complex, includes 10 MW earmarked as agricultural PV capacity.