Chaebol Tepid on Green Growth Plan
By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
Can President Lee Myung-bak's ``green growth'' plan take off? The most important constituent ― the chaebol ― believe it can but only on a voluntary basis.
A recent survey by the country's biggest business lobby showed most conglomerates agree on reducing greenhouse gas emission on the whole, but prefer voluntary control to obligatory measures due to burdening expenses.
Nine out of 10 leading companies took global warming as a serious issue, while over 85 percent of them said they would like a spontaneous agreement ― between businesses or in accord with the government ― for its promotion, the Federation of Korean Industries said Monday.
Only 11 percent of the 189 respondents were in favor of a compulsory emission earmark system, the organization said.
Three quarters of the responding firms are carrying out or planning lower-emission programs, with a correlation found between emissions and activity to reduce, according to the survey.
Companies spotted money as the biggest hurdle in adopting an eco-friendly direction.
Over 37 percent of respondents said expenses from replacing facilities were the main reason to keep them from more aggressive emission control, with most of them expecting increased prime costs to be most influential on low greenhouse gas policies.
The announcement came in the wake of last week's ambitious roadmap for clean energy development.
Authorities and private companies plan to invest 3 trillion won ($2.7 billion) in the project over the next five years, under an ambitious goal to lift the country's market share in nine major green energy businesses to 13 percent by 2030, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said last Thursday.
In the plan, first outlined at a Cheong Wa Dae meeting, the government will support various major environment-related businesses including solar and wind energy, and light emitting diodes, which are currently in operation but could use further improvement, through 2012.
Generation of clean and renewable energy is emerging as a key area in Korea as pressure to slash the current level of pollutants and soaring prices of fossil fuels are increasing, laying added onus on the country's overall industries, the ministry said.
Currently a lot of countries are waging huge campaigns on promoting renewable energy policies, according to a report released Monday by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.
Incentives on renewable energy such as aid for research and development, as well as subsidies and tax cuts, are available in a lot of countries.
Turkey is producing over $750 million of diesel from waste vegetable oil. More green roofs are being introduced in high-rises in Hong Kong in attempts to drop the downtown temperature without increasing the use of air conditioners. Canada introduced eco-friendly public bicycles, and fare adjustment machines run by solar energy, for the first time in North America.
Things are quite different in the seemingly prosperous Korea where the blueprint met with negative feedback from the beginning.
The Korean Federation for Environmental Movement (KFEM) immediately lambasted the plan, saying it is a mere repetition of the previous blueprint released in 2003 under the previous government.
``The plan has just had the term 'new, recycled energy' changed into 'green energy' from the previous edition, and there are no detailed explanations on how to boost the country's market share in major green energy businesses at all," the largest local environmental civic organization said.
``The whole master plan makes the issue sound more like propaganda, with urgings to make it 'a growth engine' and 'an export industry.' Worse, conglomerates-driven large-scale projects worrisomely lack consideration for civic engagements, which were the key to success in many advanced countries.
``We look forward to seeing some more feasible details in the project's long-term strategies and roadmap to be released next year,'' KFEM said.