Greenhouse gas reduction has shifted from a long-distance run toward a single target year to climbing down a staircase that must descend by the same margin every year. The change came as the National Assembly passed a revision to the Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth for Coping with Climate Crisis at a plenary session, along with 36 other bills. The revision adopted the "linear reduction pathway," which cuts a set percentage each year, as the method of reduction. Mid- to long-term reduction policy from now on will be drawn up to match this pathway.
The term linear reduction pathway is unfamiliar, but the principle is simple. If only the emissions figure for the target year is set, the years in between can be put off indefinitely. A plan that leaves the first five years untouched and packs the cuts into the latter five years also counts, in form, as having met the target. When the amount to be cut each year is fixed, on the other hand, no year can be skipped.
This difference shows up on the ground before it appears in the accounting books. Under target-year plans, local governments and companies often drew up scenarios that crowded large-scale facility conversions into the final few years. On a pathway with annual emissions fixed, the share not cut this year carries over intact as next year's burden. It means the standard of evaluation moves from the plan document to each year's performance.
The revised law contains the mid- to long-term national greenhouse gas reduction target for 2031 and after. The annual reduction rate and the base year that will determine the slope of the pathway have not been made public. The moment the slope is set, the reduction rate translates directly into the volumes that the power, industry and transport sectors must each handle every year.
While the pathway was being written into law, the organization that will carry it out also changed. The energy functions of the existing Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy have been merged into a single ministry. It settles a long-standing structure in which the side setting reduction targets and the side responsible for energy supply were split between different ministries. Given that handling each year's homework requires the target and the means to sit on the same desk, the reorganization bears directly on whether the pathway can be carried out.
A measure to cut industrial electricity rates was handled at the same time. Because energy prices are one of the strongest signals for reduction, rate adjustments always move as one body with the reduction pathway. Lee Heon-seok, policy committee member at Energy Justice Actions, said the deficit problem at Korea Electric Power Corporation would grow worse. How to resolve rates, finances and the reduction pathway together is likely to be the first test for the merged ministry.
There is no need to read this course of events as any one side's fault. Industrial sites are sensitive to electricity costs, power suppliers must protect their financial soundness, and the reduction pathway demands an annual tally on top of both. The collision of those three demands is closer to the friction that commonly appears in a transition period.
The standard for adjusting that friction is now the pathway written into law. That is what has changed from the period when the political calendar played that role.
The Lee Jae-myung administration's climate policy has passed its first year in effect, and a revision to the Act on the Management of Public Institutions was also handled at the same plenary session. Institutions pile up one layer at a time like this, but what actually produces each year's reductions are the choices made in buildings, factories and roads.
The first place where figures get attached is local governments' climate crisis response plans. Once the revised law's pathway is confirmed, city and provincial reduction plans will also have to be redrawn with year-by-year figures, and those drafts generally go through a public comment process. You can start by checking whether the plan for the area where you live states reduction amounts for this year and next year, or whether it lists only one target year in large print. Each year's homework, in the end, remains homework only when someone looks at it each year.
