SK chief pushes carbon neutrality to boost Busan's bid to host World Expo 2030

By Kim Hyun-bin

The Busan World Expo 2030 Bidding Committee has put forward carbon neutrality as a differentiating point to win more support to host the event in Korea. Carbon neutrality is a topic that SK Chairman Chey Tae-won, who serves as the co-chair of the Busan Expo bid committee, has been continuously pushing, according to industry officials, Wednesday.

The government and the city of Busan officially submitted its proposal on Sept. 7 to the secretariat of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in Paris for hosting the World Expo 2030 with the theme of “a great transformation of the world, a voyage to a better world.” The plan included hosting the Expo to be carbon-neutral as one of the differentiating strategies to beat Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, its main competitor.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won

The bid committee plans not only to operate the Expo itself without carbon emissions, utilizing hydrogen and electric vehicles (EV) and supplying eco-friendly energy, but also to make carbon neutrality a major goal of the Expo to share and seek solutions together on the global stage.

Chey has been presenting carbon neutrality as a theme that will be highlighted at the Expo since the beginning of his tenure as the co-chair of the bid committee. The reason he chose carbon neutrality is to use the Busan Expo as a platform for solving common problems facing all of humanity.

The chairman attended the Korea Night event held last month in New York to which U.N. ambassadors were invited. "The Expo in Busan is not intended to be a mere economic reward, but to become a platform that responds to the common tasks facing humanity," he said at the event.

Carbon neutrality is also a goal that Chey has been pushing for since before the Expo bid, serving as the chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), which has been holding the “Carbon Neutrality and Energy Policy Seminar” every other month since April, and has been striving to lay the groundwork to spread carbon neutrality awareness, including policy support and incentive proposals.

He has also made carbon neutrality a major management task at the SK Group level, and also stated that SK will contribute to the reduction of 200 million tons, which is 1 percent of the global carbon reduction target, by 2030.

Busan also declared itself a carbon-neutral city and is striving to secure differentiated competitiveness, with the goal of becoming a “leading city for carbon neutrality by 2050.”

"If the purpose and sincerity of the Expo in Busan to create a forum for discussing carbon neutrality with the world are conveyed, it will be a clear differentiating factor to attract people," an industry official said.