South Korea will invest KRW41 billion (about US$27 million) by next year to help 17 companies commercialise artificial intelligence (AI)-based environmental technologies, according to the environment ministry, as Seoul seeks to speed up the use of AI in areas such as carbon reduction, water management and pollution monitoring.
The Ministry of Climate and Energy and the Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute signed agreements last week with the selected companies under a broader multi-ministry programme aimed at bringing AI-powered products and services to market within one to two years.
The environmental component of the programme focuses on five areas closely tied to daily life: carbon neutrality, water management, resource circulation, environmental safety, and weather and climate.
The ministry said it selected 17 projects from 145 applications submitted between March 19 and April 20, based on technical merit and commercial viability.
Among the projects chosen, one in the carbon-neutrality category will use AI to integrate and control solar power generation, energy storage systems and heat pumps to cut heating and cooling costs by more than 20 per cent.
In water management, another project will analyse ageing water pipelines and abnormal signals in distribution networks to predict and prevent disasters such as sinkholes.
Under environmental safety, one selected technology will combine CCTV footage and sensor data to automatically detect and forecast indoor air pollution and fire smoke, with the aim of halving exposure time to hazardous substances.
The ministry said 16 of the 17 selected firms were small and medium-sized enterprises, while nine were based outside the Seoul metropolitan area, which it said would help broaden participation in the AI environmental technology sector and strengthen regional innovation.
Some of the companies are also pursuing exports of the products under development, the ministry said, adding that the programme could help improve the global competitiveness of South Korean environmental technology.
“This project is meaningful in that it will rapidly apply AI technology to the environmental sector and create outcomes that the public can directly feel,” Ahn Se-chang, director-general for planning and coordination at the ministry, said in a statement.
He added that the government would strengthen public-private cooperation to develop new solutions to the climate crisis and environmental challenges.
The programme also fits into a wider policy drive to build out AI-related infrastructure and industries. The government last week unveiled a sweeping package of AI and semiconductor investment plans, while SK Inc and private equity firm KKR said they would launch a KRW2 trillion (US$1.3 billion) renewable energy platform aimed in part at meeting rising power demand from AI data centres and chip manufacturing.
The initiative comes as governments and companies across Asia are looking to apply AI more directly to climate and environmental challenges, from managing electricity demand and renewable power to monitoring water systems and pollution risks.
A recent United Nations University report on climate technology identified AI as a growing area of focus for sustainability applications such as energy optimisation, climate risk analysis and environmental monitoring.
