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Last week, the Dutch Pension Asset Management, which manages a whopping 850 trillion won, sent a warning letter to 10 large Korean companies in which they invest.

As a shareholder, he was reprimanded as a shareholder, saying that the lack of carbon reduction efforts could damage corporate value, but Samsung Electronics was the key.

It has the highest carbon footprint, and there is no clear carbon neutral plan.



Environmental reporter Jang Se-man covered why only Samsung Electronics is lagging behind in the global trend of carbon reduction.



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Samsung Electronics emitted 87.4 tons of carbon when it sold a product worth 1 million dollars.



It is 25 times more than Apple, which weighs only 3.4 tons.



Immediately, foreign investors took issue with it.



[Park Yoo-Kyung / APG Asia Pacific Regional Director Responsible Investment: (Samsung Electronics) If you look at the growth strategy, carbon emissions will increase, but this is exactly the opposite of the global trend, so you must know as a shareholder or institutional investor.]



Carbon neutrality There are already close to 100 Korean companies that have declared, so why is Samsung Electronics the only company that remains silent?



The reason is the huge amount of electricity that goes into the semiconductor process.



Carbon neutrality requires the use of low-carbon renewable energy electricity generated from solar or wind power instead of conventional industrial electricity mainly based on coal-fired power, which is not easy.



In Korea, it is not easy to find a place for solar or wind power generation, and the indirect cost of licensing is high, so it is more than 10% more expensive than the existing industrial electricity.



It is not easy for Samsung Electronics to change it willingly, as it is paying more than 1 trillion won in electricity bills a year.



Even if you risk the bleeding, it is not easy to secure a large amount of regenerative electricity as needed due to the current domestic conditions.



On the other hand, in parts of Europe and the United States where there are competitors, so-called 'grid parity', in which renewable electricity is cheaper than conventional electricity, has already become a reality.



It is for this reason that leading overseas companies were able to declare RE100 that they would only use renewable electricity.



However, Samsung Electronics does not have much time to blame solely on the environment.



This is because semiconductor competitors such as Intel in the United States and TSMC in Taiwan have completed the RE100 declaration one after another, and Europe and the United States are pushing for trade barriers that add tariffs on high-carbon products through the carbon border adjustment system.



If the timing to respond to carbon is missed, it is urgent to respond promptly as the corporate image will deteriorate and export competitiveness will suffer.



(Video editing: Kim Byung-jik)