The purpose of this study is to test whether Korea’s emission trading scheme (KETS) was effective in curbing GHG emissions in the three major emitting sectors during the first commitment period (2015–2017). The merged dataset, which contains GHG emissions, the amount of free allowances, fuel use and sales at the firm level, and market price information for fuels and Korea’s allowance units (KAU), was used for the empirical exercise in this paper. Our research show that the adoption of the KETS was effective in improving the carbon intensity of KETS-regulated entities in the manufacturing and building sectors, but not in the power sector. The reduction burden, defined as the proportion of the expected emission level to the amount of free allowances allocated before the complying year starts, was shown to be critical in altering CO₂ emission characteristics of covered entities in the manufacturing and building sectors. This paper’s empirical findings also suggest that the development of a pricing scheme reflects carbon costs in electricity prices, In addition to the stringency in free allowances allocated to large emitters, is necessary to mitigate CO₂ emissions in the power sector.

这项研究的目的是检验韩国的排放权交易计划（KETS）在第一个承诺期（2015-2017年）是否有效地抑制了三个主要排放部门的温室气体排放。本文采用了合并后的数据集，该数据集包含GHG排放量，免费配额量，公司一级的燃料使用和销售以及燃料和韩国配额单位（KAU）的市场价格信息，用于本文的实证研究。我们的研究表明，采用KETS可以有效地改善制造业和建筑业中KETS监管实体的碳强度，但不适用于电力部门。减少负担定义为预期排放水平占合规年度开始之前分配的免费配额数量的比例，对于改变二氧化碳的排放量至关重要。₂制造业和建筑业涵盖实体的排放特征。本文的实证研究结果还表明，定价机制的制定反映了电价中的碳成本，除了严格分配给大型排放者的免费配额外，对于缓解电力部门的CO ₂排放也是必要的。