National Competitive Advantage and Energy Transitions in Korea and Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Despite the rise of domestic firms as leading manufacturers of clean technology products, Korea and Taiwan were the lowest users of green energy in the developed world. However, in 2016 Taiwan took a decisive turn to scaling up the use of renewables while lessening the dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, and Korea did the same the following year. These significant events raise an intriguing question: Why were these countries capable of embarking on their green energy transitions and with such urgency when they did? I argue that the intensification of competitive pressures in the global renewables sector created the conditions for these states to muster a developmental response via the expansion of domestic markets for renewables. These governments used this opportunity to accelerate the promotion of cutting-edge energy innovations, which would help create new sources of national techno-economic competitiveness. My overall argument is that developmental-cum-environmental states possess national competitive advantages for coping with a global shift to renewables. The findings have implications for the debate over the popular idea of ‘green growth’ and its effectiveness in theory and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Renewables
• green growth
• developmental environmentalism
• Korea
• Taiwan

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers, Linda Weiss, John A. Mathews and my political science colleagues in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations for their feedback on earlier drafts. I also benefited greatly from feedback provided from the participants at the Department of Government and International Relations Staff Colloquium Series at the University of Sydney (November 2017) and at the 11th Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) Workshop held at the University of Sydney (February 2020). All errors are my own. I am grateful for the on-going support provided under Macquarie University’s Faculty of Arts Research Travel Scheme (FRTS).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Take the example of Australia and the government’s steadfast commitment to build new electricity generation facilities using coal.

2 An idea long established in the comparative capitalism literature (cf. Katzenstein 1985, Weiss 2003).

3 Seminal works on the concept include those by Amsden (1989), Deyo, ed. (1987), Evans (1995), Wade (1990/2004), Weiss (1998) and Woo (1991).

4 See Dent’s (2014) work on the related concept of ‘new developmentalism’.

5 Importing on average 98% of energy needs (EIA 2018)

6 Similarly, to Korea, importing on average 98% of energy needs (EIA 2016).

7 The escalating competition in clean technologies is amply demonstrated by the increase in multilateral trade disputes over solar PV and wind turbine supply chains (Meckling and Hughes 2018).

8 RE100 has a membership of 140 companies, largely from the U.S. http://there100.org/companies [Accessed 3/9/18].

9 https://rebuyers.org/about/vision/ [Accessed 13/9/19]

10 Author interview with the Chairperson of the Committee on Green Growth, Professor Kim JungWk, 17 December 2019, Seoul.

11 https://gggi.org/gggi-holds-the-gggi-energy-forum-2018-in-seoul-to-accelerate-the-renewable-energy-transition/ [Accessed 14/9/19].

12 While falling short of more ambitious targets being pursued by many other countries listed in REN21’s (2019, pp. 188-190) report, the targets represent significant increases from 2017 levels in which solar PV capacity was approximately 5.5GW and wind capacity was 1.1GW (Lee 2019a).

13 Author interview with the former Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy, Professor Paik Un-gyu, 16 December 2019, Seoul.

14 http://www.hyundai-electric.com/elec/en/integrict/integrict2.jsp [Accessed 13/8/18].

15 Others include the Internet of Things (via an ‘Asia Silicon Valley’), biomedicine, national defence and aerospace, and smart or intelligent machinery. A focus on ‘new agriculture’ and the ‘circular economy’ were soon added to these technological fields.

16 Longer-term targets are likely to be formulated especially after President Tsai’s success in renewing her term in the recent elections in January 2020.

17 Author interview with a Senior Official in ITRI and the BOE, MOEA, 9 December 2019, Taipei.

18 Author interview with the former Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy, Professor Paik Un-gyu, 16 December 2019, Seoul.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sung-Young Kim

Sung-Young Kim is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Macquarie University.