South Korea has doubled its target for reduction of GHG emissions in 2013 in a plan to increase competitiveness prior to introducing a cap-and-trade scheme in 2015.
The aim is to reduce industrial generated emissions by 17.2MtCO2eq (3%) of current annual emissions in 2013. 570.6Mt of CO2eq emissions are presently emitted from 377 major industrial and power companies. The cut will reduce total emissions from all sources in 2013 to 589.8Mt.
Companies that fail to meet their emission reduction targets in 2013 will pay a maximum of 10M Korean won ($9000) – a relatively low cost, but a price that will jump considerably when the cap-and-trade scheme is introduced in 2015.
Posco tops the list of industrial emitters with a target set for 2013 not to exceed 2.480MtCO2eq − a 26% share of the emissions from Korea’s top 10 emitters. This is followed by fellow steelmaker, Hyundai Steel (487ktCO2eq or 5.1% of the total). Cement. Power generation, display and electronics are the other industries in the top ten emitters.
