• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.51-83
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• 2022

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), one of the most commonly adopted regulation for renewable energy expansion since 2012, has the obvious advantage of inducing competition in power generation source and alleviating the government's financial burden. However, the abuse of credit multipliers and the use of national Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) have resulted in the distortion of RPS as a quantitative control policy. Just as no face value 10 years ago can hold its real value, this paper highlights for the first time that 27.8% of total renewable obligations over the total RPS period were not actually met due to REC inflation and the consequent decline in the value of renewable energy generation. In addition, the distortion of face/real value of REC causes problems in interoperability with other government policies such as RE100 and Emission Trading System.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.1-34
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• 2008

It is recognized that RPS(Renewable Portfolio Standard) and FIT(Feed-in Tariff) are two main policy instruments to promote Renewable Electricity(RE). The Korean Government announced in 2008 that RE promotion scheme will be changed to RPS from current FIT system in 2012. But we believe RPS is inferior to FIT for promoting less developed technologies such as photovoltaics or wind power. This is because the achievement of RE promotion in countries adopting RPS is markedly worse than that in European counties or Janpan adopting FIT. If the policy change is inevitable, when considering the lessons from Japan's failure as well as supporting the less developed technologies, it is recommended that either the market should be divided into several technology and scale categories, or more RPS-Credit per kWh should be assigned to the photovoltaic and wind power than instead of letting the all technologies compete in the "open category". It is also recommended that (1) Renewable Energy Promotion Fund(tentative name) based on a part of current energy related tax revenue should be introduced, or (2) cost of supporting the Renewable Electricity should automatically be transferred into the electricity bill of electricity consumers following the German System.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.91-111
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• 2020

While the renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS) is in place to expand the scale of renewable energy generation, the power producer can obtain the renewable energy credit (REC) and use it as an incentive to operate the facility. RECs secured by solar power generation can be traded through spot market or fixed price contracts, and, in the spot market trading, power producers are exposed to the uncertainty of REC spot price. In this study, real option analysis is conducted to analyze the optimal threshold of REC spot price for the conversion of REC trading method by power producer considering the uncertainty of REC spot price. We calculated the optimal threshold of REC spot price that can convert the trading method of REC from spot market to fixed price contract. In conclusion, the spot market trading is a rational trading method when considering the uncertainty of REC price, but the fixed price bidding is a rational trading method when not considering the uncertainty of REC price.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.453-460
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the potential quantity of Korean Offset Credits (KOC) resulting from Certified Emission Reductions (CER) in 98 domestic Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects that were registered with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as of the end of 2016. Our results show that the total amount of potential KOC is 62,774 kt CO2eq. The potential KOC is only 23.4% of the total CER Issuance. During the first phase, this will be 3.2% of the allocated volume. This is because many projects are related to Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), HFC-23, and adipic acid N2O. There is a strong bias in some sectors and projects which could act as market distortion factors. Therefore, it is necessary to expand the target CDM project and activate non CDM offset projects. RPS projects bring fundamental changes to the energy sector, and it is worth reconsidering their acceptability. A wide variety of policy incentives are needed to address strong biases toward certain sectors and projects. The offset scheme has the advantage of allowing entities to reduce their GHG emissions cost effectively through a market mechanism as well as enabling more entities to participate in GHG reduction efforts both directly and indirectly. In contrast, having an inadequate offset scheme range and size might decrease the effort on GHG reduction or concentrate available resources on specific projects. As such, it is of paramount importance to design and operate the offset scheme in such a way that it reflects the situation of the country.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.64 no.5
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• pp.667-679
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• 2015

The bearer of the power sector's ETS compliance cost is power consumer for the following reasons. Firstly, power companies are constrained in establishing appropriate strategies to comply with ETS regulations due to the structural differences between the domestic power market and emission trading system. In other words, because power companies do not have a right to determine price and production of electricity, they have to compete with other companies under disadvantaged conditions in the emission trading market. Secondly, because ETS compliance cost is part of power production costs as it is also clearly written in the national greenhouse gas reduction road-map and the second energy supply plan, the cost should be included in power price following the power market operation rule. Thirdly, the most effective method to reduce carbon emissions in power sector is to reduce power demand, which is efficiently achieved through raising power price to a realistic level. Low power price in Korea is the major cause of rising power demand which is also the major cause of rising GHG emission. Therefore, power sector's ETS compliance cost should be included in power price to encourage power consumers' actions on reducing power consumption. Fourthly, when externality cost occurs in the process of delivering public services, usually beneficiary pay principle is applied to identify the cost bearer. Since electricity is one representative public good, the bearer of power sector's ETS compliance cost is power consumer.