South Korea’s authorities are backing away from their long-standing claim that most air pollution is blown in from China, and so is out of their hands
middle of a huge coastal mud flat, Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, announced in October the beginning of “a new 1,000-year energy history” for his country. Behind him stretched a field of solar panels; a large windmill loomed in the background. The area, called Saemangeum, was dammed with the world’s largest seawall under a previous administration. Mr Moon wants it to become home to wind farms and solar plants capable of generating 4The site has unfortunate associations.
The commitment is timely. South Korean voters are increasingly sensitive to environmental matters, particularly the fine dust that blankets the country for large parts of the year. Scrutiny of coal-fired power plants and other industries is growing, and the authorities are backing away from their long-standing claim that most air pollution is blown in from China, and so is out of their hands.
But the government is woolly about how it will achieve its goals. A generous price subsidy for renewable generation was scrapped in 2012. Saemangeum aside, the country’s rugged terrain makes installing renewables expensive. The average electricity price paid by consumers is around $0.10 a kilowatt-hour, among the lowest in the, a club of rich and middle-income countries. Raising it would be the obvious way to pay for the expansion .
That makes it hard for the government to attract private investment to projects such as Saemangeum. The local development agency is offering tax breaks and preferential land leases to investors who are willing to take the plunge. Since 2012 the government has said that a steadily growing share of power sold by utilities—currently 6%—must come from renewable sources, but it is not rising fast enough to hit the government’s targets.
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