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The Korea Times

Entertainment & Arts

SCMP
Asia

The Korea Times

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Columnists

Kim Sung-woo

How to best utilize Basic Plan for Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth

Last month, the Presidential Commission on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth (of which I am member) passed the 1st Basic Plan for Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth (Basic Plan), which was ultimately approved and confirmed at a Cabinet Meeting on April 11. The Basic Plan, designed as a countermeasure to the global climate crisis and government-led support for sustainable growth, is to be established every five years over the next 20 years (from 2023 through 2042).

2023-05-07 16:30

Climate technology: a challenge and opportunity

On March 20, 2023, 195 member states of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, unanimously adopted the Sixth Assessment Report on the climate crisis following the panel's 58th session in Switzerland. According to the report, it is “more likely than not” that the Earth's temperature will rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040, which goes against the target set at the Paris Climate Accords.

2023-04-09 16:40

South Korea to get up to speed for international greenhouse gas reduction

South Korea pledged to reduce its emissions of 291 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) by 2030. Of the 291 reduction, 11.5 percent, or 33.5 million tons, must come from international mitigation projects, which include technical support, investment and procurements conducted to achieve GHG reduction targets as stipulated under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

2023-03-12 16:40

Korea's RE100 policy and sustainability

Countries around the world are creating increasingly favorable conditions for renewable energy supply. Take the examples of the U.S.' Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the European Union's plan to expand the supply of renewable energy, RePower EU.

2023-02-12 16:40

Most popular search terms in 2022 and implications for companies

What was the most popular search term in 2022? Perhaps many would think “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” the Netflix top-chart Korean drama, or “Qatar World Cup.” Surprisingly, the answer was “climate change.” Announcing that the No. 1 search term of the year was “climate change,” Google Korea noted last December that environmental issues have been garnering increasingly more attention from the public.

2023-01-08 16:40

New environment policy and regulations expected to aid rise of hydrogen

Among the various elements discovered by humans so far, hydrogen is known as the element that is the most abundant, lightest and simplest in structure. Water, which covers more than 70 percent of the earth, is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. An important property that is missing in hydrogen's profile is that hydrogen has the strong potential to become a key source of our next-generation clean energy, which is essential to cope with the climate crisis.

2022-12-11 16:50

2050 Presidential Commission on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth kicks off

On Oct. 26, the Presidential Commission on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth officially started its work. Unlike its predecessors, the National Council on Climate and Air Quality and the Carbon Neutrality Committee, the commission has its foundation under the Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth for Coping with Climate Crisis, which came into force last March. Having experienced all three committees, the commission seems to have particularly more solid support compared to its predecessors thanks to the underlying basis for its roles and responsibilities engrained in the statu...

2022-11-13 13:59

Earth getting hotter, people getting sicker

Last April, the publication Nature published some notable research. Due to climate change, animals are traveling outside of their original habitats more frequently, which is expected to create 123,000 new contacts with different species and 4,600 cases of pathogen sharing among mammals by 2070. In other words, as the Earth gets hotter, more animals come into contact with each other, which is likely to lead to one more case of pathogen sharing every three to four days.

2022-10-09 17:00

Energy transition challenges and roles of technology

The summer of 2022 was by far the worst season in recent climate history. Record-level droughts, heavy rains and heat waves showed how devastating climate aberrations can be across the globe. The United States saw multiple once-in-a-thousand-years rainfalls, with Illinois alone being blasted for 12 hours with average rainfall of about 200 millimeters per hour noting that the record rainfall in Seoul that paralyzed the city in early August recorded 141 mm per hour.

2022-09-19 14:42

Korea lags behind in global renewable energy market

The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for solar and wind power last year fell by 13 percent to 15 percent year-on-year, thanks to an increase in global investment and advances in relevant technologies, according to a report titled “Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2021” released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) on July 13.

2022-08-07 16:11

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