'Utility fees should go up'

Yoon Seong-kyu
Environment Minister

By Cho Jae-hyon, Kim Jae-won

This summer, civil servants are sweating in offices because they are obliged to maintain a "mandatory" temperature of 28 degrees Celsius or higher in their workplaces.

However, such stop-gap measures won't help resolve the nation's power shortage problems. Policymakers are well aware of the fact that making power usage costlier and instituting systems to spur companies to produce renewable energy are more fundamental steps.

But few policymakers openly stress the need for raising energy prices, as higher electricity prices will not only add pressure on inflation, but also put a larger dent on the already sluggish domestic economy.

However, Environment Minister Yoon Seong-kyu takes quite a clear stance on the issue.

"We are using electricity at prices that are too low. That's why we are spending it excessively. We must raise electricity rates," said Yoon during a recent interview in his office in Seoul.

Yoon, who had an opportunity to work in Germany and study mechanical engineering there in the 1980s and 1990s, noted that Korea is a country that has cheaper electricity costs than other nations.

"Germany has a larger population and its economy is about 3.5 times as big as Korea's, but the amount of its annual electricity usage is similar to Korea's. Furthermore, Germany is reducing the amount of annual electricity usage gradually, but our consumption is growing by about 2.2 percent annually," he said.

Yoon said that German households use electricity at a cost about 3.4 times as expensive as Koreans do.

"It's not easy to raise electricity charges. But without that, we won't be able to solve energy shortage problems," he said.

The career bureaucrat's candid way of talking matches well with his nickname "German soldier" who marches straight forward despite unknown dangers ahead.

The nickname also reflects his character sticking to principles — especially when it comes to environment issues.

Touching on the environmental policies of the previous Lee Myung-bak government, he spoke straightforwardly, criticizing the Lee administration for its failure to deliver on its promise to make the country "greener" with a "green growth" campaign.

"The previous government did nothing in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas," he said. "It just declared green growth, and spent three years doing nothing."

While he was working as a member of Park's transition committee, he found that the Lee government did not announce statistics of CO2 emissions of 2010 because it rose by 9.5 percent from a year ago.

"Former President Lee said it (CO2 emission) would increase by 5 percent in Copenhagen, but it doubled, so the government did not announce it. So I ordered it to make it open to the public. The Lee government's environmental policy was all about barking with no real bite."

As the Lee administration had been idling to cut the CO2 emissions, the Park Geun-hye government was given a tougher job: reducing greenhouse gas emissions with a shortened span of time.

To tackle the tall tasks, the ministry has launched two strategies to cut 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, a goal set in the United National Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009.

One is to introduce rules that can motivate companies to develop environment-related technologies. Under current regulations, if one company develops a waste-disposal technology, they don't have to develop higher technologies.

"We need to change the rules of the game in a way to spur them to develop technologies. The best available technology (BAT) scheme will do the work," he said.

Under the BAT system, companies will be obliged to have their waste-disposal technology reapproved by the authorities every five or 10 years.

"This will provide companies with motivation to develop environment-related technologies. It will create a virtuous cycle where companies compete to develop higher technologies, create more jobs and make a greater, value-added contribution to boosting the economy," the minister said.

The other is to vitalize a market where companies can trade their credits to emit CO2. By doing so, companies will be under pressure to cut greenhouse gas emissions to reduce their costs.

Yoon said that the government will control certified emission reductions (CERs) market by distributing the carbon credits to companies in proper quantity based on demand and supply.

CERs are a type of emissions unit issued by the ministry for emission reductions under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol. The country is set to open the first round of the market in 2015.

"We will distribute CERs after carefully calculating their demand and supply because companies may want to secure as many as CERs, which are free in the first round," said Yoon.

He said that the ministry is calculating CO2 emissions, which will be completed by November. The process is focused on corporate activities because they use 95 percent of energies.