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A Study on the Limitations of South Korea's National ... - MDPI › publication › fulltext › A-Study-o... › publication › fulltext › A-Study-o...by S Ha · ‎2019 · ‎Cited by 10 · ‎Related articlesJul 22, 2019 — Figure 2. Korea's 2016 greenhouse gas reduction
A Study on the Limitations of South Korea’s National Roadmap for Greenhouse Gas Reduction by 2030 and Suggestions for Improvement Sungkyun Ha 1 , Sungho Tae 2, * and Rakhyun Kim 3, * 1 2 3

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Department of Architectural Engineering, Hanyang University, 55 Hanyangdaehak-ro, Sangnok-gu, Ansan 15588, Korea Department of Architecture & Architectural Engineering, Hanyang University, 55 Hanyangdaehak-ro, Sangnok-gu, Ansan 15588, Korea Sustainable Building Research Center, Hanyang University, 55 Hanyangdaehak-ro, Sangnok-gu, Ansan 15588, Korea Correspondence: [email protected] (S.T.); [email protected] (R.K.); Tel.: +82-31-400-5187 (S.T.); +82-31-436-8076 (R.K.)

Received: 21 May 2019; Accepted: 15 July 2019; Published: 22 July 2019

 

Abstract: South Korea must submit its targets for greenhouse gas reduction by 2030 to comply with the Paris Agreement. While South Korea’s government has announced a roadmap for achieving greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2030, issues are present regarding the methodology used to set reduction targets, select the reduction method, and estimate the potential emissions reduction in the building sector. Accordingly, the present study identified the limitations based on an analysis of the roadmap and suggested an improvement plan for each limitation. To improve the roadmap, the methodology used to set emissions targets was changed from business-as-usual (BAU) to the absolute emissions method, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines were applied to estimate greenhouse gas emissions, and methodology for determining emissions targets by year was proposed. The reduction method has been proposed abstractly, and five methods have been suggested: Energy consumption by building age and establishment of gross floor area for cooling/heating, supply status for each type of lighting, estimation of reduction amount through supply of LED lighting, reduction amount estimation by analyzing current supply status data for home appliances and office equipment, proposal of methodology for improvement of duplicate estimation for building energy maintenance systems (BEMS), and estimation of reduction potential by applying efficiency improvement in power generating equipment. Keywords: 2030 Roadmap; greenhouse gas; building sector

1. Introduction Due to the recently observed phenomenon of abnormal temperatures around the world caused by climate change, global interest in climate change has continued to grow. The international scientific community has identified greenhouse gases (GHGs) as the main culprit responsible for climate change and has invested considerable effort to reduce GHG levels. In 2015, as an active response to climate change, the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) entered into the Paris Agreement for the purpose of reducing GHG emission levels [1]. The Paris Agreement represents an agreement among 196 major advanced and developing countries to voluntarily reduce GHG emissions through nationally determined contribution (NDC) [2,3]. The existing Kyoto Protocol called for reduction of GHG emissions by an average of 5.2% below 1990 levels among 37 major advanced Sustainability 2019, 11, 3969; doi:10.3390/su11143969

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countries but did not apply to developing countries; therefore, South Korea was not part of the Kyoto Protocol [4]. However, the Paris Agreement includes both advanced and developing countries. In accordance with the Paris Agreement, the following parties announced their GHG reduction targets to the international community as follows—U.S.: 28% relative to 2005 levels, E.U.: 40% relative to 1990 levels, Japan: 26% relative to 2013 levels, Canada: 30% relative to 2005 levels, and China: 60–65% relative to GDP per person in 2005 [5,6]. South Korea proposed its target emission level by 2030 as 37% reduction relative to business as usual (BAU) levels, which included domestic reduction of 25.7% and foreign reduction of 11.3% through international market mechanisms [7]. Accordingly, the South Korean government announced a “2030 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Roadmap”, hereafter referred to as “the roadmap”, for achieving its GHG reduction of 37% by 2030 and proposed reduction targets for six sectors: Industry, building, transport, agriculture and livestock, waste, and commerce–public. With respect to reduction targets by sector, the targets for industry, transport, agriculture and livestock, waste, and commerce–public sectors were 20.5%, 29.3%, 8.2%, 28.9%, and 25.3%, respectively [8]. Meanwhile, the reduction target for the building sector was 32.7%, which was the highest among all of the sectors, indicating a need for further investigation [9,10]. Based on the analysis of the roadmap for the building sector, the following limitations were observed: 1) Limitation in setting the target emission levels, 2) absence of clearly defined methods for reduction, and 3) need for improvement in the methodology used to estimat