ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

The Korean Taxonomy was first enacted in December 2021, defining a total of 69 economic activities, comprising 64 green economic activities and 5 transitional economic activities. In December 2022, the Ministry of Environment announced the revision of the Korean Taxonomy, which added the economic activity of nuclear power generation. A total of 74 economic activities were defined, comprising 67 green economic activities and 7 transitional economic activities. In December 2022, the Financial Services Commission and the Ministry of Environment revised the Green Bond Guidelines to ensure that Korean green bonds that follow the Green Bond Guidelines only invest in projects that comply with the Korean Taxonomy. The EU also announced a revision of the Green Taxonomy in July 2022. The revision was made by leaving the Taxonomy Regulation intact and enacting the Complimentary Climate Delegated Act, which adds some economic activities. In particular, nuclear power generation and fossil fuel power generation were added, which is analyzed as the need for nuclear power generation and fossil fuel power generation has been greatly increased due to the energy shortage in Europe due to the crisis in Ukraine. The EU Taxonomy provides specific technical assessment criteria for each of the six environmental goals through delegated acts: first, the Climate Delegated Act on technical assessment criteria for climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation was enacted in June 2021 and has been in force since January 2022. The Disclosures Delegated Act on disclosures related to the taxonomy was enacted in July 2021 and will come into force in January 2022. Finally, the Environmental Delegated Act was enacted in June 2023 to establish specific technical review criteria for each of the remaining environmental targets, and has been in effect since January 2024. After the announcement of the EU"s ESG legislative plan to create a sustainable corporate ecosystem in 2018, the EU has recently completed the first phase of establishing the relevant regulatory system by establishing specific criteria for eco-friendly economic activities, such as establishing a Taxonomy and proposing CSRD. In particular, the EU Taxonomy has actively reflected international standards, norms, and principles and serves as a global standard, so it is evaluated that it has substantially influenced the establishment of the Korean Taxonomy. From this perspective, this paper closely compares and analyzes the EU Taxonomy and the Korean Taxonomy and draws several policy implications for the effective operation and management of the the Korean Taxonomy. First, it is necessary to actively review the criteria for recognition, exclusion, and protection of aluminum manufacturing economic activities that are currently excluded from the Korean Taxonomy. Second, the acceptance criteria for pollutants in the BAT Method developed and managed by the National Institute of Environmental Science should be reviewed for each industry. Third, it is necessary to check the compatibility with global Taxonomy regarding the strictness of the recognition criteria. Fourth, under the premise that companies will be required to disclose their compliance with the Korean Taxonomy for their economic activities in the future, measures should be taken to ease the disclosure burden on companies. Fifth, third-party verification of the fulfillment of the activity criteria, recognition criteria, exclusion criteria, and protection criteria is necessary. Sixth, from a corporate governance perspective, issues such as the roles and responsibilities of directors and management regarding sustainability disclosure, as well as the verification and quantification of sustainability information through objective indicators, should be considered in further legislation.

키워드