Will Korea meet its COP26 pledges?

By Troy Stangarone

For the last two weeks, much of the world's attention has been focused on Glasgow and COP26, the U.N. summit to address climate change. World leaders and government officials have been working to bridge the divide between the short-term need for economic growth and the steps required to deal with the long-term challenges our planet faces from rising temperatures.

This tension was brought to the forefront of the talks after an agreement on deforestation was reached early during negotiations in Glasgow. More than 100 countries agreed "to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation."

Trees absorb and hold in significant amounts of carbon dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere when they are cut down and left to rot or are burned. Despite signing up to the deforestation agreement, Indonesia's minister for the environment argued that the agreement was unfair as it undermined Indonesia's efforts for economic growth.

Indonesia's dilemma is one that every country, including South Korea faces. Can we slow the emissions of greenhouse gases while still maintaining or improving our current standards of living? How they answer over this decade will determine whether the world is able to keep global temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Average global temperatures are already 1.1°C higher than the pre-industrial era and the science suggests that if the world is unable to reduce its emissions by 40 percent this decade temperature rises will exceed 1.5°C, the level at which the world will experience the worst damage from climate change.

In recent years, South Korean policy has been shifting to address this issue. President Moon Jae-in has invested in developing hydrogen as a viable alternative energy source, made a significant investment in offshore wind power, and pledged to make South Korea carbon neutral by 2050.

In advance of COP26, the Moon administration pledged to further reduce South Korea's emissions by 40 percent over 2018 levels by 2030. This is a more significant reduction than South Korea's previous pledge to reduce emissions by 24.4 percent from 2017 levels.

At COP26, South Korea also signed up to the global pledge to reduce emissions of methane gas, which has 80 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, by 30 percent by 2030.

For South Korea to reach its overall emissions reduction goal its will need to reduce emissions on average by 24.2 million metric tons a year over this decade and see emissions fall to levels not seen since the mid-1990s.

Reducing South Korea's emissions on that scale will take time and new investments in wind, solar power, and other renewable energy resources, but as Arnold Schwarzenegger recently pointed out it is possible for countries to grow their economies and reduce emissions. California, the world's 5th largest economy, has done just that. Since 2000, California's GDP has grown by 63 percent while the carbon intensity of its economy has declined by 45 percent.

In addition to being technically feasible, there are strong economic incentives to reduce the carbon intensity of South Korea's economy.

Corporations are beginning to set their own carbon standards. Apple, for one, has set the goal of having a carbon neutral supply chain by 2030, two decades before South Korea and many countries plan to be carbon neutral. It has signed up 110 suppliers to produce components with renewable power, including South Korean firms such as SK hynix, Samsung SDI, POSCO and LG Energy Solution.

Each of these firms will need access to renewable power to maintain their supplier relationships with Apple, or need to move them abroad to locations that offer access to renewable power if South Korea is unable to significantly increase its production of renewable energy.

Global policies may also change in ways that would negatively impact South Korean industries. In addition to agreeing to remove steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, the United States and European Union announced talks to deal with the carbon intensity of steel. South Korean steel production is more carbon intense than U.S. or EU production, by some metrics.

The U.S.-EU steel and aluminum talks are open to countries such as South Korea, but their results will likely lead to requirements for additional reductions in the carbon intensity of steel. If South Korean firms are unable to reduce their carbon intensity, they could face increased restrictions on steel exports to the United States and Europe and in time products such as automobiles that use steel.

Climate change has implication for eventual unification as well. The U.S. intelligence community has identified North Korea as one of 11 countries most vulnerable to climate change due to its "poor infrastructure and resource management."

The Moon administration has made commitments that will put South Korea on a path to contributing to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, but energy transitions do not take place overnight. It will take time to implement new policies and a commitment to build new facilities to reduce South Korea's carbon footprint. Ultimately, it will be the next South Korean administration that will likely determine whether South Korea meets those commitments.

Troy Stangarone (ts@keia.org) is the senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute.