INTERVIEW Korea's Green New Deal 'ineffective, repetitive'
Environment minister Cho Myung-rae delivers a keynote speech at the Korea Environmental Institute's forum about the Ministry of Environment's Green New Deal, at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul's Jung-gu District on May 28. Courtesy of Ministry of Environment
By Ko Dong-hwan
The central government announced a third supplementary budget worth 35.3 trillion won ($29.4 billion) June 2, the largest such single budget in the country's history, to sustain the reeling economy following the global shock from the coronavirus pandemic. Along with previous supplementary budgets, the total COVID-19 relief package rolled out this year has reached 270 trillion won.
The latest budget includes money for the Ministry of Environment's “Green New Deal,” part of Korean New Deal policies to create new growth platforms. The ministry was assigned 586.7 billion won for the Green New Deal, which “purportedly” will support 22 new businesses in three core areas: industries with low-carbon emission, those focusing on green-growth, and others adapting to climate change with high-tech efficiency.
But while the ministry has flaunted the Green New Deal's creation of jobs, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by a wider use of renewable energies and beefing up the top 100 eco-friendly local innovative firms, activists and experts from the energy, air quality, ecology and civil engineering sectors have largely criticized the plan, based on analyses they shared directly with The Korea Times.
One major critique is that the Green New Deal is ineffective.
Renault Samsung's Twizy is one of the electric vehicles available in Korea that are becoming essential in reducing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. Courtesy of Renault Samsung
Chang Moon-hee, an adjunct professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology, said the plan appears to have wholly ignored the concept of energy security, being just a set of “armchair theories.”
As to the government's low-carbon plan to roll out 5,500 plus electric freight trucks and 10,000-plus electric two-wheel vehicles costing 110 billion won, he said this was “not a job for the environment ministry but that of industry or transport.”
“The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from those electric vehicles will be almost insignificant,” Chang said. “Conversely, it might only increase emissions from the infrastructure required to generate power for such vehicles.”
Kim Dong-young, a senior researcher of air quality management at the Gyeonggi Research Institute, said the plan simply to introduce more electric vehicles missed “the need for a recharging infrastructure and ways to expand the local market share of the vehicles.”
Another low-carbon strategy, costing 10 billion, in the Green New Deal aims to expand renewable energy use to about 5,200 existing basic environmental infrastructures nationwide, such as water purification and sewage processing plants. But Chang said Korea's renewable energy, primarily photovoltaic and wind resources, would “hardly benefit this infrastructure from an environmental viewpoint”
“Power capacity and maintenance, and how to link to the national power grid in cases of emergency are some of the variables that must be considered when deploying a new renewable energy source,” Chang said. “Without such plans, the idea is just another one of those armchair theories.”
The government's plan to use 'hydrothermal energy' to power the country's waterworks infrastructure has drawn criticism from experts who say it should also include dams and drainage systems in broader areas throughout the country's entire water circulation system in order to use renewable energy more effectively for smart cities and factories. GETTYIMAGEBANK
Jung Jae-sung, a professor of civil engineering at Sunchon National University and the Yeongsan River jurisdiction chief on the Presidential Water Management Committee, said that managing waterworks infrastructure in a more eco-friendly way must go beyond city infrastructure and extend to dams, and underground water and drainage systems to more effectively monitor water amount, quality and safety problems throughout the country's entire water circulation routes.
“The Green New Deal's water-based renewable energy plan lacks details because adopting renewable energy in water infrastructure is also related to smart cities and factories so it takes a long time to achieve cooperation from various agencies and stakeholders,” Jung said.
Chang also criticized the effectiveness of the main pillar of the Green New Deal's climate change strategies ― preparing smart cities and factories using artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT) and big data, with the relevant budget topping 33.7 billion won. Such advanced infrastructure need a tremendous amount of electricity, which would be “impossible to get solely from renewable energy,” he said.
“Smart green cities ― to support their photovoltaic-based structures' unstable power supply ― must have a solar electricity storage system (ESS) for each building as well as ways to bring in outside power if the city's electricity pool gets depleted,” Chang said.
“While liquefied natural gas (LNG), a back-up for renewable energy, produces 60 percent of the carbon emission of coal, ESS are limited in capacity and highly susceptible to starting fires, while buildings covered in solar panels are also environmentally worrisome. Is this a Green New Deal, when environmental damage is inevitable one way or another?”
The smart city control-tower platform at Guro District Office in Seoul, which was launched in May 2020, monitors the office's IoT businesses via closed-circuit television, keeping an eye on the district's traffic, climate, security and safety status 24 hours a day. Korea Times file
Former Kyung Hee University professor of nuclear engineering Whang Joo-ho said the idea of a smart city has long been talked about among the ministries of land, environment and industry for more than a decade, but only recently were small things starting to materialize in practice.
“It would be practically impossible to complete smart city master plans within this year with an allotted budget of 1 billion won, and start implementing the plans from next year,” Whang said. “And if they want to add green to smart cities, they must discuss how to work it out with ongoing city projects.”
Whang also said it would be ineffective for the ministry to invest 50 billion won in creating 13,000 jobs for “simple tasks” such as recycling waste and monitoring wild animals to counter the spread of African swine fever.
Another major flaw of the Green New Deal, according to experts, is that some of its businesses are far from innovative and are a repetition of policies that date back to the administrations of Park Geun-hye (2013-17) and Lee Myung-bak (2008-13).
The Green New Deal's vision and plan is nothing new, but was discussed and implemented before as part of the Lee administration's green growth strategies, according to Jung and Lee.
Solar panels on houses in South Gyeongsang Province. Courtesy of South Gyeongsang Provincial Government
Many Green New Deal plans criticized by the experts as repetitions include funding prospective eco-startups and their research and development, or giving loans to those companies, all for under 401 billion won.
Kim said the ministry's latest plan to help companies with environmental technology development and their global expansion seem “not so different from that which the Korea Environmental Industry Technology Institute has been doing so far.” Most of the funding for the latest green-growth incubator businesses, according to Whang, “have simply ballooned the funds for existing similar businesses or added a few little things.”
“What's most critical in the country's transition to a low-carbon platform, and the reduction of greenhouse gases, is innovative changes in the local manufacturing sector but policies for this, or the administration's willingness toward them, seem to be missing,” Lee said. “To me, the whole thing seemed deliberately to avoid encouraging local companies to move toward an energy transition, which is the direst need right now.”
The insufficient scale of the budget for businesses was another point that provoked the experts. Lee said that a 123 billion won investment in greenhouse gas reduction and a 1 billion won in recycling plastics and used batteries from electric vehicles were “completely insufficient.”
“The budget for waste recycling is so small I think it is just for a show and won't achieve anything,” Lee said. “The investment in clean, energy-efficient smart factories (10 billion won) needs much more for the fundamental preparation of research and development into the factories' transition to renewable energy.”
(From top left clockwise) Chang Moon-hee, adjunct professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology; Jung Jae-sung, professor of civil engineering at Sunchon National University; Kim Dong-young, senior researcher for air quality management at Gyeonggi Research Institute; Lee In-soo, chief of Dangjin Energy Center; Whang Joo-ho, former professor of nuclear engineering at Kyung Hee University; and Choi Yul, president of Korea Green Foundation
As for the government's goal of introducing a business cluster for hydrothermal energy with spending of 1.2 billion won, Kim said the scale was “merely that of a demonstration project” and must be expanded by adopting renewable energy facilities to not just city waterworks infrastructure but also rivers and oceans, as well as building test sites, “to see the fruit of the investment.”
“To achieve the Green New Deal's eco-friendly sustainable development vision, eco-friendly ecology must be realized throughout the country's social and economic sectors,” Kim said. “That needs a major structural transition, which can only be kick-started by the government's priming investment.”
Also missing from the Green New Deal was prioritizing which environmental steps were more important, such as when to introduce more jobs in relevant fields or providing electric vehicles to the public, according to Korea Green Foundation President Choi Yul. He said the priority should be based on the amount of expected greenhouse gas emissions, then followed by choosing and focusing on more imminent problems, thus boosting the plan's effectiveness. Instead, the ministry has just created a “to do” list.
“Instead of suggesting providing more electric vehicles in a terse manner, the plan should have prioritized introducing more electric or hydrogen public transport, which is used by most people in the country,” Choi said. “Delivery vehicles and those used in distributing shopping goods such as motorcycles and trucks must be revamped next, followed by rolling out more electric cars for personal use.”