Prof. Jae-Seung Lee’s Research on the Characteristics and Limitations of Green Premium in the Korean RE100 System in New & Renewable Energy (Vol.18, No.3, 2022)

The green premium is the most important feature of Korea’s RE100 system. Green premium has three characteristics. The first, the cost of implementation is lower than that of other means of implementation. The second, it is linked with the RPS system to keep the means of implementing the green premium low. Third, the funds raised by the green premium are used to supply renewable energy to compensate for the additionality that the green premium does not have. When the entire industrial sector’s electricity consumption is converted to renewable energy, the implementation cost of the green premium is estimated to be 3,377.4 billion won, and the REC purchase is estimated to incur the implementation cost of 6,576.4 billion won, which is 3.5 trillion more than the green premium. It was analyzed that an additional implementation cost of KRW 100 million would occur. In addition, in the case of solar PPA, it was analyzed that additional implementation costs of KRW 13,375.7 billion to KRW 16,162.3 billion were incurred. It was estimated that the renewable energy that could be supplied to the green premium would at least be sufficient for companies exporting to the US and EU. In addition, it was analyzed that when the fund created as a green premium is used for renewable energy supply, about 30.7% of the renewable energy supply through PPA can be supplied. However, as ESG is emphasized, green premium can be criticized by green washing because there is no additionality. There is also a limit to responding to the EU’s CBAM. Therefore, companies can use the green premium depending on the situation, but it is more advantageous to use PPA, etc. The government needs to sufficiently maintain the supply of renewable energy using the fund to maintain the green premium.