The rise and fall of green growth: Korea's energy sector experiment and its lessons for sustainable energy policy

Abstract

The idea of "green growth" has received international attention for more than a decade as a promising solution to a distinctly modern problem: a century of unparalleled increases in wealth based on equally unparalleled innovations in energy technology accompanied by global environmental threats such as climate change and persistent socioeconomic inequality. The green growth premise is that this problem can be solved without surrendering continued economic growth by a redirection of human effort to invent green energy technology, green energy markets, and green energy choice. Proponents have argued that green-energy based economic growth represents a paradigm shift bringing forth sustainable and equitable relations between environment, economy, and society. The paper reviews a decade of green energy growth strategies and practices. The Korean Green Growth Initiative (KGGI) is investigated as a case study of green energy growth operationalization. Korea's experiment was widely hailed by international bodies such as The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) for its bold attempt at paradigm shift, with the hope that, if it succeeded, countries currently on the periphery of modern development would be able to overcome conditions of poverty, environmental degradation, and political dependency. But our analysis of the Korean case questions the idea and ideology of green energy growth, demonstrating instead that KGGI was quickly coopted by the paradigm it was supposed to supplant. In this respect, one contradiction in the strategy and practice of green energy growth has been its promise to change the trajectory of modern development without requiring serious changes in modern values and ideology.

Green Growth Policy, De-Growth, and Sustainability: The Alternative Solution for Achieving the Balance between Both the Natural and the Economic System

“…[13] expressed concerns about the trajectory of Asian Green Growth, as to whether it remained a top-down approach driven only by policymakers. Such concerns have been supported by a recent paper by [45] showing how Korean government officers proposing a radical Green Growth energy transition plan were "defeated in policy, planning and implementation efforts" by "development first" sectors of the government that forced the abandonment of transformational policy in favor of the status quo. Ref.…”

Expanding the Conceptual and Analytical Basis of Energy Justice: Beyond the Three-Tenet Framework

“…to the periphery (UCC, 1987;Touché and Rogers, 2005;Luna, 2008;NAACP, 2012;Ji et al, 2015). As social awareness grows about this pattern, technical solutions such as 'green growth, ' 'clean coal, ' and 'inherently safe nuclear power' are being found by researchers to actually lead to deepening inequality and unsustainability (Byrne et al, 2006(Byrne et al, , 2009Richardson, 2017;Ha and Byrne, 2019).…”

“…But the ideal has often been captured by consultants, modelers, and planners who argue that sustainability requires a technical understanding of our problems and is therefore best left for experts to decipher. For instance, the concept of 'green growth, ' which was supposed to be rooted in a new discourse of sustainable development, today usually relies heavily on technological solutions to energy problems without taking justice implications seriously (Ha and Byrne, 2019). Advocates of green growth consider technologies like nuclear energy as an ideal option to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fortify national security without compromising economic growth.…”

Direct Short-Term Forecast of Photovoltaic Power through a Comparative Study between COMS and Himawari-8 Meteorological Satellite Images in a Deep Neural Network

“…For market participants, PV forecasts are required to avoid potential penalties and generate precise bids. In Korea, the PV market has experienced remarkable growth over the past decade due to considerable improvements in domestic PV technology, steady funding for PV research, implementation of government policies promoting the use of renewable energy, and the establishment of basic plans and detailed action programs [14][15][16]. As shown in Figure 1, the PV power market is continuously expanding in PV power transactions and PV power consumption.…”

“…As shown in Figure 1, the PV power market is continuously expanding in PV power transactions and PV power consumption. The government seeks to increase the energy contribution of solar stations to 14.1% of the nation's total renewable energy production by 2035 and to invest in increasing the commercialization of PV technology and their global market share [15]. With regards to the Korea power exchange market, bids are received based on the power supplier's generating capacity and conducting thorough demand forecasts for optimal pricing and scheduling.…”