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

摘要

The idea of “green growth” has received international attention for more than adecade as a promising solution to a distinctly modern problem: a century of unparalleledincreases in wealth based on equally unparalleled innovations in energytechnology accompanied by global environmental threats such as climate changeand persistent socioeconomic inequality. The green growth premise is that thisproblem can be solved without surrendering continued economic growth by a redirectionof human effort to invent green energy technology, green energy markets,and green energy choice. Proponents have argued that green-energy based economicgrowth represents a paradigm shift bringing forth sustainable and equitablerelations between environment, economy, and society. The paper reviews a decadeof 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 TheOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and UnitedNations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) for its boldattempt at paradigm shift, with the hope that, if it succeeded, countries currently onthe periphery of modern development would be able to overcome conditions ofpoverty, environmental degradation, and political dependency. But our analysis ofthe Korean case questions the idea and ideology of green energy growth, demonstratinginstead that KGGI was quickly coopted by the paradigm it was supposedto supplant. In this respect, one contradiction in the strategy and practice of greenenergy growth has been its promise to change the trajectory of modern developmentwithout requiring serious changes in modern values and ideology.