ENGAGING NORTH-KOREA ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY

The DPRK is presently at a crossroads in its political and economic de velopment. Recent events have focused world attention on the Korean pe ninsula, including: The proposed transfer of light-water reactor (LWR) technology to the DPRK The issue of nuclear weapons proliferation in Northeast Asia Work towards a US-DPRK accord Ongoing restrictions on D PRK oil imports Floods and poor recent harvests in the DPRK The overal l poor performance of the North Korean economy since 1990, and The eve r-present - though amorphous and varying - prospects for reunification of South and North Korea. Against this backdrop, this paper reviews s ome of the energy sector problems in the DPRK, presents an estimated e nergy supply/demand balance that is a synthesis of the available infor mation on the energy sector, and uses this estimated balance to prepar e order-of-magnitude estimates of the prospects for near-to-medium-ter m implementation of selected energy-efficiency and renewable energy te chnologies in North Korea. The technologies evaluated, and other relev ant energy-efficiency and renewable energy technologies and measures a re described. Barriers to energy efficiency improvements in the DPRK ( including institutional and other constraints) are discussed, and poss ible strategies are suggested that can help to lower or eliminate thes e barriers, while providing opportunities for constuctive engagement a nd ongoing dialogue with the North Koreans. Our estimates of the poten tial energy savings from a sample group of energy efficiency and renew able energy measures - assumed to be implemented in an aggressive prog ram over a ten-year time span - include 390 PJ (petajoules, or 10(15) Joules) per year of coal savings (29 percent of estimated 1990 product ion) in year ten of the program at a cost of $US 1.3 billion, plus 50 PJ per year of electricity (about 25 percent of 1990 generation) at a cost of about $1.7 billion. This electricity savings is similar in mag nitude to the output of the 2 GW (Gigawatts) of proposed LWR capacity, so the efficiency measures that we have identified effectively produc e as much electricity as the proposed LWRs, plus significant coal savi ngs, for substantially less money. This comparison is not to suggest t hat efficiency and renewable energy measures are a substitute for LWR transfers; politically, they must be viewed as complementary initiativ es.