Willingness to pay for green electricity in Korea

Green electricity is the electricity generated from renewable energy sources such as solar power, wind power, small-scale hydropower, tidal power and biomass power. They do not produce pollutants and are considered environmentally friendly. However, it is more costly, considering current technology and the government should take visible actions to compensate production costs. This paper applies a contingent valuation (CV) method to obtain at least a preliminary evaluation of the benefits of introducing the policy that raises the rate of using green electricity from 0.2% of the total electricity supply to 7% of it by 2011. By analyzing the consumer’s benefits about green electricity policy, we can determine whether the policy is economically desirable.