Gwangmyeong Mayor Park Seung-won Proposes New National Project 'Leading Local Governments for Carbon Neutrality: 100'

Gwangmyeong Mayor Park Seung-won met with Minister of Climate and Energy Kim Sung-hwan on the 20th to propose the establishment of a new national project titled 'Leading Local Governments for Carbon Neutrality: 100'.

The core of 'Leading Local Governments for Carbon Neutrality: 100' is to designate local governments that implement carbon neutrality policies tailored to regional conditions and characteristics to achieve the nation's carbon neutrality goals as leading regions, and to disseminate excellent outcomes nationwide through intensive national-level support.

At the meeting, Mayor Park said, "Since carbon neutrality requires the power of citizens, local governments that are closely aligned with regional conditions and citizens' daily lives must operationalize policies and drive citizens' participation to realize true carbon neutrality. Systematic national-level support is necessary to enable local governments to implement region-specific policies and produce tangible results."

In response, Minister Kim replied, "I will actively review measures to enhance the implementation capability of local governments' carbon neutrality policies and to disseminate excellent cases nationwide."

The 'Leading Local Governments for Carbon Neutrality: 100' proposed by Gwangmyeong City establishes policy implementation standards for each sector, and based on these standards, selects leading local governments and provides necessary support for project implementation.

The city also proposed a system that evaluates implementation performance annually and strengthens national treasury subsidy linkages for excellent cities to elicit voluntary participation and substantive outcomes from local governments.

This was modeled after Japan's 'Decarbonization Leading Regions' policy, under which Japan is gradually selecting leading regions with the goal of creating more than 100 sites by 2030 and providing related decarbonization grants.

Gwangmyeong City's eco-friendly delivery culture development project reduces carbon emissions in the delivery process and promotes local economic vitalization by linking electric two-wheelers conversion, charging infrastructure, and local currency incentives. It was previously introduced as a leading project for the transportation sector signature project at the Korea's Green Transformation (K-GX) Strategy National Report Conference and received attention.

Minister Kim announced that if Gwangmyeong City's eco-friendly delivery culture development demonstration project is successfully implemented, the Climate and Energy Ministry plans to promote nationwide dissemination based on its outcomes. Additionally, the minister proposed that Gwangmyeong City participate in collaborative efforts for the K-GX Green Delivery pilot project to be pursued by the Climate and Energy Ministry.

Mayor Park said, "Gwangmyeong City will share the carbon neutrality policy experience it has accumulated in the field with more regions and continue to translate it into substantive carbon reduction outcomes through cooperation with the government. We will continuously discover and disseminate carbon neutrality policies that citizens can directly experience."