A wise approach to climate action

Kim Sung-woo

By Kim Sung-woo

• Published Feb 10, 2026 4:10 PM KST

As 2026 begins, New Year’s conversations rarely linger on the “grand discourse” of melting glaciers or atmospheric carbon parts per million. Instead, the focus is on stock portfolios and the relentless evolution of artificial intelligence (AI).

Prioritizing the tangible and the immediate is a natural human tendency. We react with visceral urgency to a dip in our investment accounts or news of an AI model capable of replacing our job functions. Climate change, by contrast, has long been viewed as a distant, abstract threat. This preference for the immediate assumes we can safely “delay” our climate response — a premise that is no longer valid. The 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold, once the psychological “red line” for global stability, has already been beached in short-term data. Scientists warn that by 2030, this breach will be permanent in long-term statistical averages. This isn’t just a number; it marks the beginning of irreversible planetary changes where “responding later” is no longer a viable option.

The failure of the moral argument

For half a century, the environmental movement has relied on a moral imperative: that climate change is a long-term threat requiring absolute priority. This approach has largely failed to move the needle. As far back as 1981, U.S. President Jimmy Carter warned that warming must be limited to within 2 degrees — 35 years before the Paris Agreement. Yet, in the decades since, climate action has been consistently sidelined by immediate economic and security crises, while global fossil fuel consumption climbed.

The fragility of the old international order was underscored on Jan. 7, 2026, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced a withdrawal from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This move shook the foundations of global cooperation. If we continue to argue that climate change is “more important” than the economy or national security, we will continue to lose the argument. A “wise” approach stops competing with these priorities and begins integrating with them.

Synergy of AI, energy and resilience

To be effective in this new era, we must prove that climate action drives the short-term goals society already values. The AI boom is, at its heart, an energy crisis. The massive compute power required for next-generation models demands an unprecedented surge in electricity. Solar power is currently the fastest-deployable energy source on the planet. For tech companies needing gigawatts of power to bring data centers online, solar offers a speed-to-market that fossil fuels or traditional nuclear cannot match. Also, climate change already manifests, as more frequent and severe typhoons and wildfires devastate centralized power grids. To protect the digital infrastructure running our economy, we must pivot from centralized, fossil fuel-based distribution to decentralized, renewable-heavy systems. This is essential risk management to ensure that a single downed power line does not paralyze a nation’s AI infrastructure. In addition, for countries like Korea and Japan, which are heavily reliant on manufacturing and energy imports, the transition to clean energy is a matter of energy independence. In a world of geopolitical volatility, the ability to generate power from the wind and sun is the ultimate security blanket.

Capitalizing on the 1,000 trillion won frontier

The transition to a low-carbon economy is creating a new market frontier that is expanding daily. While Korea previously struggled with rigid frameworks like K-Taxonomy, the new Transition Finance Guidelines offer a bridge for high-carbon industries to secure the funding necessary for survival. Early movers are already securing global dominance.

Financial projections suggest that the world will require an additional 4,500GW of power generation by 2030. This represents a 1,000 trillion won ($688 billion) market for equipment, infrastructure and services over the next five years. In advanced power markets, the criteria for awarding contracts have shifted to speed, reliability and price — areas where Korean companies have a distinct competitive edge, from transformer and nuclear construction to essential “bridge” technologies like high-efficient gas turbines.

Turning geopolitics into opportunity

The current geopolitical climate presents a unique opening. While direct price competition with Chinese manufacturers is difficult, U.S. tariff policies and trade barriers are creating a protected space for clean technologies.

For core technologies like energy storage systems (ESS) and solar modules, U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods act as a massive subsidy for Korean and Japanese exporters. In the mature U.S. market, reliability and system stability are paramount. With 70 percent of the U.S. power grid at least 25 years old and the average large transformer over 40 years old, replacement demand is staggering. U.S. utilities are prioritizing trusted partners to ensure grid stability, a requirement perfectly aligned with our industrial strengths.

We must also focus on the early commercialization of future-proof technologies by leveraging domestic demand to drive down the cost of hydrogen and developing high-efficiency solar module given domestic renewable energy will reach 100GW in 2030.

The public’s obsession with stocks and AI is not a distraction to be overcome; it is the vehicle we must use. We will not convince the world to care about the climate by asking them to look away from their investment accounts. We will convince them by proving that climate action is what will make those accounts grow.

For half a century, we argued that the planet was more important that the purse. The result was a breach of the 1.5 degree limit. A “wise” response for 2026 means demonstrating that the transition to a low-carbon economy is an engine for growth, security and innovation. The conversation isn’t about choosing between AI and the planet — it’s about recognizing that we cannot have one without the other.

Kim Sung-woo, head of Environment & Energy Research Institute at Kim & Chang, is a member of the National Climate Fund management committee.