By Na Jeong-ju
Korea announced a bold plan Wednesday to invest 40 trillion won ($36 billion) over the next five years in developing renewable energy sources and nurture them into new economic growth engines.
The government forecast the country’s exports of clean energy will reach $36.2 billion in 2015, if the plan is implemented successfully, creating some 110,000 jobs here.
The investment is part of the Lee Myung-bak administration’s “green growth” strategy aimed at turning environmental technologies into the main drivers of economic growth and new sources of jobs. It is seeking to reduce the heavy dependence on oil and gas imports and tackle greenhouse gas emissions.
“The solar energy and wind power industries can become the backbone of our economy like the semiconductor and shipbuilding industries,” President Lee said during a meeting of the Presidential Committee on Green Growth at the Convention and Exhibition Center in southern Seoul.
Under the plan, the government will inject 7 trillion won, while the private sector will spend 33 trillion won by 2015 to develop core technologies for renewable energy. In this way, Korea will be able to become one of the world’s top five clean energy powers in 2015, it said.
Global demand for renewable energy stood at $162 billion in 2009, but grew at an average rate of 28.2 percent a year for the past five years, which means the market will be worth $400 billion in 2015 if it continues to grow at the same rate, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.
At the meeting, the CEO-turned-President also stressed the importance of securing a stable supply of water, saying the government will map out a comprehensive plan to develop water resources.
“The water industry is emerging as a core industry in the 21st century,” Lee said. “We should realize that in the era of climate change, the value and importance of the sun, wind and water will become more and more significant.”
The measures are in line with the country’s vision of playing a central role in coordinating environmental policies among countries and developing related technologies, officials said.
Last year, Seoul pledged to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent from levels predicted for 2020, becoming the first emerging economy to set up a reduction goal. In June, the government set up the Global Green Growth Institute, a global think tank tasked to promote green growth and tackle climate change.
Korea also announced a bid to host the 2012 climate talks to help the world chart a post-Kyoto Protocol roadmap on greenhouse gas reduction.
Last month, the government announced measures to promote the use of renewable energy among government agencies and private firms.
Under the new rule, all electric power companies that generate more than 500 megawatts of electricity per hour must diversify their portfolio of energy sources beginning 2012 and increase the supply of electricity generated from renewable energy sources to 10 percent in 2022.
Starting next year, all public buildings with an office space of 1,000 square meters or more should replace 10 percent of their energy needs with power generated from renewable energy, and 20 percent by 2020.