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South Korea’s hydrogen economy program as a case of weak ecological modernization

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Abstract

In January 2019, the South Korean president Moon Jae In announced his plans for the transformation of the South Korean economy into a “hydrogen economy.” This involves the replacement of fossil fuels for the production of energy on a large scale. The government’s plan supports the use of hydrogen fuel cells (HFCs) for industrial and residential energy production and promotes the replacement of vehicles with internal combustion engines that burn fossil fuel by cars that are powered by HFCs. This study is primarily interested in the plans of the South Korean government to facilitate the production of hydrogen for mobile purposes and to promote fuel cell vehicles (FCVs); and it investigates whether this South Korean policy can be considered a case of ecological modernization. Ecological modernization is a concept that has been developed in a European context and was adopted by the European Union as its main principle in environmental policy making. The new South Korean policy is outlined in the government’s Hydrogen Economy Roadmap which specifies the measures that have to be taken to initiate the transformation of the South Korean transport system based on hydrogen and announces several ambitious goals which the government wants to achieve with this program until 2022, 2030, and 2040, respectively. At its center is an effort to build a nationwide network of hydrogen gas stations, to reduce the price of hydrogen by more than half, and to facilitate the purchase of FCVs. It was found that the overall environmental benefits of this program would be meager in the medium-term, but in the long term it could contribute to a considerable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and of fine dust, depending on the technology that is used to produce hydrogen.

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Notes

  1. It is possible to combine HFCs and batteries in one vehicle, which would make it an electric-electric hybrid.

  2. The “Green Growth Program” of the Lee administration was also known as “Green New Deal” because it focused on stimulating the economy of South Korea as an answer to the economic slowdown caused by the global financial crisis of 2008. The phrase “New Deal” is reminiscent of the public stimulus package implemented in the U.S. by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s as a countermeasure to the Great Depression. It focused on large infrastructure programs that were meant to provide people with jobs that paid a decent wage the spending of which would have a positive effect on economic growth. It essentially was a Keynesian policy. One of the most famous projects of the time was the construction of the Hoover Dam. The Green Growth Program of the Lee administration also concentrated on infrastructure measures, especially the refurbishment of the four largest rivers of the country which was meant as a contribution to the water and flood management of the country. It included the spending of US $45 billion dollars and had three main objectives. The first of these goals was the mitigation of climate change and of energy independence, the second goal was the generation of new growth engines, and the third focused on the improvement of living standards and the enhancement of the nation’s status (Sonnenschein and Mundaca 2015). While this strategy had very ambitious goals, it failed to reach most of them by a large margin (Ha and Byrne 2019).

  3. 2016 was the warmest year, followed by 2017 as the second warmest, 2015 as the third, and 2018 as the fourth warmest year (WMO 2019).

  4. According to Encyclopædia Britannica (2019), the physicist and barrister William Grove was the first to build a fuel cell in 1842.

  5. Exchange rate of January 1, 2021: 1 Korean won = US $0.00092.

  6. Currently, a liter of gasoline is sold for 1600 won in South Korea. Assuming that a car on average uses 5.5 liter per 100 km, the fuel which such a car needs to drive that distance costs 8800 won. Hydrogen for the same distance would cost less than 8000 won.

  7. Since electric cars produce almost no noise, the increase of the share of electric cars such as HFC vehicles in the car fleet of South Korea could contribute to a noticeable reduction of traffic noise.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Bisa Research Grant of Keimyung University in 2018.

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Correspondence to Ralf Havertz.

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Havertz, R. South Korea’s hydrogen economy program as a case of weak ecological modernization. Asia Eur J 19, 209–226 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-021-00594-7

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