All rights reserved2023-08-112023-08-112019978-88-99243-93-7https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/536Planning for Transition – book of proceedings 31; 2One of the major objectives of smart city development is achieving energy efficiency and moving towards a low-carbon energy society. The idea is that ICT-embedded urban infrastructure can enable efficient energy management and contribute to reducing CO2 emission. In that sense, a smart city can play an important role in the energy transition. In South Korea, the government plays a major role in smart city development. Since the 2000s the governments implemented informatization and digitalization and since 2008 they started smart city implementation across the country. Then how these government-led smart city initiatives perform in the energy transition? The purpose of this paper is to discover the contribution of government-led smart city initiatives in the energy transition. After building a conceptual framework on smart city and energy transition, we develop a Smart Energy Transition Index. The 161 cities in South Korea are grouped into three categories: 1st and 2nd wave smart cities and non-smart cities. The index score is compared among the groups and the analysis showed that there is a significant difference between 2nd wave smart cities and the 1st and the non-smart cities. The analysis provided empirical evidence of the smart city’s contribution to the energy transition.enopenAccesssmart cityenergy transitionsmart energy transition index (SETI)South KoreaconferenceObject4261-4277