From green energy laggard to leader: the progress, set-backs, and future of South Korea's Green Growth Strategy

The aim of this chapter is to highlight the state's pivotal role in advancing South Korea's rapid progress in green energy innovation to date. We also explain why, despite various set-backs, the state's strategic activism is likely to be equally pivotal in solidifying the country's leadership in green technologies in the future. Korea's experience of greening is unique because, arguably, no other country has so firmly placed green energy innovation at the centre of its national development strategy. Since the late 2000s, Korea's national ‘Green Growth Strategy’ has served as a means to cope with unprecedented concerns over energy security, national techno-economic competitiveness and environmental degradation. This chapter probes the roles of the Korean state (and industrial actors) in promoting green energy innovations. To help illustrate the government's role, we focus on Korea's national smart grid strategy, given the centrality of this technology to a clean energy revolution. However, there remain various factors which have directly or indirectly complicated such efforts, including the centrality of state-owned utilities in the energy system and the role of nuclear energy for generating power. We show how the state's internalisation of these realities through a strategy of ‘developmental environmentalism’ is likely to aid Korea's efforts to persevere with its green growth agenda, not least given the state's recent strides towards building a green hydrogen economy.