탄소중립 시대의 에너지 수요관리에 관한 법적 고찰

The international community formed a consensus on carbon neutrality under the new climate regime by adopting the Paris Agreement. Carbon neutrality is a mid- to long-term assignment in the energy sector, and energy demand management is receiving attention as one of the measures to put it into practice. The government has been carrying out supply-oriented energy policies aiming to expand supply facilities ensuring stable provision of energy. Nonetheless, it was unavoidable that the centralized energy supply method has reached its limits due to social, economic, and environmental problems related to the installation of supply facilities such as power plants. Moreover, as South Korea actively took part in responding to climate change as a member of the international community, the direction of energy policies started to consider diverse values such as efficiency and environment in addition to energy security. This change provided an opportunity to take interest in energy demand management, beyond the existing supply-oriented energy policies. Until now, energy demand management has been considered only a part of policies and has been excluded from normative discussions. Although regulations for energy demand management are gradually on the rise in reality, there is no established conceptual definition of this issue. Therefore, it is not even clear to what extent the regulations can be justified. This study defined the concept of energy demand management as a series of activities aiming to improve the energy efficiency in terms of its production, transformation, transportation, storage, and use including fuel, heat and electricity. Thus, this study emphasized that the direct purpose of demand management consisted in improving energy efficiency. However, energy demand management follows a variable concept. If the purpose of demand management is expanded, the concept may change as well, and the degree of state intervention and the relevant justification may vary accordingly. When energy demand management is implemented through systems, it is required to adjust profits and optimize the goals to avoid conflicts between energy supply stability and environmental protection. From this perspective, analyzing the energy demand management under the current legislations, we can derive problems of legal systems as well as problems of stages in demand management. Since energy demand management interacts organically under the relation between energy supply and energy demand, it is necessary that it should be conducted under a certain system. With this in mind, it is essential to not only strengthen the connection of energy policies by enacting the Framework Act on Energy, but also prepare a legal basis for demand management based on the public participation in the mission of establishing energy plans and creating foundation to ensure accuracy of demand prediction.