The South Korean administration supported environmentally friendly renewable energy businesses and provided $127bn in global fossil fuel projects.
The Export-Import Bank of Korea ordinarily acknowledged as the Korea Eximbank is the official export credit agency of South Korea. According to the statistics, approximately $57.7bn of South Korea’s sponsoring to overseas oil and gas projects was on offshore power plants and shipbuilding, where the country is one of the world’s prevalent players.
Export-Import Bank of Korea (KEXIM) said,
“We had supported environmentally friendly and renewable energy businesses abroad with Won5.5tn ($4.7bn) in spending last year.”
South Korea’s public financial institutions have delivered over and above $127bn for global fossil fuel projects over the past decade. There are projections by the environmental group that the country outsides pressure to reply to climate transformation.
The highlighted investments by South Korean state banks and companies in global fossil fuel projects are the probable indications of the country’s skirmishes to make progress on plummeting carbon emissions. South Korea is the second-biggest public investment banker of oil and gas projects internationally, after China.
Although numerous economies, comprising South Korea, have guaranteed to halt capitalizing on coal projects, activists are turning their attention to oil and gas.
S-run financial institutions such as the Korea Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of Korea (KEXIM), and the Korea Trade Insurance Corp keep on big sponsors of oil and gas globally.
Public financing for overseas oil and gas projects was 13 times grander over the past 10 years than that for coal-fired power generation, which amounted to $10bn.
The relatively specific fuel-oil consumption director, Sejong Youn said,
“The figures are shocking. South Korea has long been criticized as a climate villain for providing massive support to global fossil fuel projects, but the country’s newly revealed public finance to overseas oil and gas completely dwarfs its backing of coal. The oil and gas financing discussion has not even begun. South Korea has always viewed overseas oil and gas investment as an energy security issue because the nation relies entirely on imported fossil fuels. Seoul’s heavy investment in fossil fuels contradicted President Moon Jae-in’s promise to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.”
Among the projects highlighted by SFOC was a $5.6bn Australian liquefied natural gas development, in which South Korea conglomerate SK E&S holds a 37.5 percent stake with financial support from KEXIM. SFOC called it one of the world’s most polluting global fossil fuel projects.
The relative specific fuel-oil consumption commended South Korea to keep an eye on the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States and discontinue backing new global fossil fuel projects. SFOC has warned that public sponsoring of the sector would cement the economic dependence of Korea on fossil fuels.
Korea originates impartial 5 percent of the electricity from renewable energy businesses.
The Prime Minister of South Korea Kim Boo-kyum said,
“Korea would actively join an international campaign against global warming through legislation aimed at achieving carbon neutrality. Our energy-intensive industry structure has made the country a manufacturing powerhouse. But it is time for us to respond to the global issue of a climate crisis with global fossil fuel projects.”
There are numerous speculations concerning the environmental and climatic Impacts. According to environmentalists, the fuels such as LNG gave off substantial aggregates of greenhouse gases in the course of extraction, processing, and transportation.
Renewable energy businesses are extremely important and so is the investment in global fossil fuel projects.
Sources
https://www.ft.com/content/21aef9c7-b452-4d55-bfdc-2994b12a539b
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X21002230
https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/100_billion_climate_finance_report.pdf
