Korea occupies a unique place in energy use and climate change. A member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development since 1996, the country is similar to developed nations in per capita income and energy use, but is counted among the developing countries by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The energy choices Korea makes may influence the global response to climate change out of proportion to Korea's geographic size. Korea's leadership potential can be seen in its electric power sector - a microcosm of the climate change dilemma faced by developing countries.

Korea's economy has sustained three consecutive decades of rapid economic growth. GDP per capita averages over $10,000, several times that of most developing nations and comparable to some European countries. Korea also now ranks tenth in the world in total energy consumption. Electricity use per capita is twice Argentina's and four times China's, though only 40 percent that of the United States. Yet power demand in Korea, like that of a developing country, is expanding even faster than the economy. Indeed, Korea plans to double its power supply over the next 15 years.

Whether Korea chooses coal, gas, nuclear, or renewable energy will directly affect the economic competitiveness of the nation and consumer pocketbooks. Korea's choices will also affect the local and global environment. Depending on the energy technologies it chooses, doubling power supply could leave the power sector's greenhouse gas emissions unchanged, or more than double them. Further, control of the power system is being shifted from state-owned monopolies to competing private electricity supply companies. How this mix of policy, growth, and technology will affect investment costs and the local and global environment is the subject of this report.