Title of Dissertation: national renewable energy policy

Table 5. 
Case selection.
 
Multinational solar manufacturer 
Yes 
No 
Size of 
domestic 
market 
Big 
U.S.
, Germany, Japan 
Australia, France, Italy, Spain, 
UK 
Small 
South Korea
, Norway, 
Canada 
Austria, Chile, Czech Republic, 
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, 
Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, 
Luxemburg, Mexico, Netherland, 
Poland, Portugal, Slovak 
Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, 
Switzerland, Turkey 
20
IEA, 
2014 Snapshot of Global PV Markets
. IEA PVPS T1-26:2015. http://www.iea-
pvps.org/fileadmin/dam/public/report/technical/PVPS_report_-
_A_Snapshot_of_Global_PV_-_1992-2014.pdf. 

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29 
Table 6 shows the differences between the U.S. and South Korea. In terms of the 
size of economy, the U.S. economy is more than ten times of that of South Korea, but the 
size of high-technology exports is similar. This shows that the economy of South Korea 
is more export-driven. Renewable energy is more developed in the U.S. than South 
Korea; the share of renewables in primary energy is 6.9% in the U.S, and 1.5% in South 
Korea. The investments in renewables of South Korea are only about 2% of the 
investments of the U.S. 
The technical potential of solar PV is much higher in the U.S. than in South 
Korea. This shows that the potential growth of domestic market would be much bigger in 
the U.S. In South Korea, insufficient potential of solar PV has been pointed out as one of 
the barriers of solar PV development. Under these circumstances, the solar PV industry in 
South Korea has focused on manufacturing and exporting of solar PV products such as 
polysilicon, cell, module, components and equipment. As a result, in South Korea, 61% 
of the solar PV corporations are manufacturers, while it is only 21% in the U.S. Small 
domestic market and advanced manufacturing have driven Korean solar PV industry to 
export most of their products. In 2014, South Korea exported $2.3 billion, which was 
similar size of the solar PV exports of the U.S. Given that the electricity generation from 
solar PV in South Korea is only 12% of that in the U.S., the statistics of export shows that 
Korean solar PV industry is much more export-driven than the U.S.