Korea’s Support Measures for Small Company’s Environmental Facility : Future Tasks and Policy Implications

We are now definitely living in the 'Low Carbon and Green Growth' era, and there are numerous pioneer environmental companies seeking business opportunities in environmental areas. The 'Ecomagination' of GE is a good example. In addition, some findings show that greater efforts towards environmental activity of a company resulted in rises of its stock prices. The sustainable management has also been focused as the company's social responsibility. However, the money that goes towards environmental regulatory compliance is inevitably considered as cost rather than investment. From the perspective of the regulated, it is taken for granted that such compliance would not be preferred over sales growth and profit increase. Furthermore, the above case of rise in stock prices could be interpreted that the company has so much management resources that it can expend efforts on lower priorities. Nevertheless, we should accept the reality that environmental regulation compliance brings about considerable amounts of money that can place a burden on a company's management resources. Above all, in view of small companies, it becomes more severe as environmental regulations tighten year after year. In this article, we examine the domestic and foreign support measures for supporting the environmental compliance of small companies. We can find some adequacy in terms of pollution discharge, environmental regulation stage and target group, and comparisons with other regulation costs. Above all things, we focused on the Ministry of Environment's support for tiny firms' environmental facility installation and renovation