SDF

LEE Yujin conducts research focusing on climate action and local energy transformations. She is co-director of GUSSWO (Local Energy Transformation Network) and General Policy Advisor on Green New Deal Policy for Gwangju Metropolitan Government. As a member of the Presidential Committee on Carbon Neutrality, she helped draft the current administration’s 2050 carbon neutrality scenarios and 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals. She has a deep interest in developing solutions and policies to help improve Korean society through a transition to a net-zero future.

In addition to previous roles as Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on the Green New Deal and non-executive director on the board of the Seoul Energy Cooperation, she assisted in the adoption and implementation of the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s One Less Nuclear Plant and Solar City Seoul initiatives and Green New Deal policy. She has actively participated in the efforts of the environmental group Green Korea and, as co-chair of the steering committee of Green Party Korea, ran for election to the National Assembly three times.

She received a master’s degree in public policy from the Korea Development Institute and a doctoral degree from the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Seoul National University with a thesis on the energy transition experiment of Seongdaegol Energy Village, an “energy independent village” in Seoul. Her published works include Local Energy is Our Hope, Harvesting Wind and Sun, The Story of Climate Change, and Transition City (translated titles). She was selected as one of “100 People Who Made the World a Better Place in 2008” by the Korea Green Foundation and went on to receive the 2015 Environmentalist of the Year Award, given by the Korean Environmental Journalists’ Club, and the 2021 Deulbul Award, an award given by the Deulbul Patriotic Martyrs Memorial Foundation in recognition of work that embodies the pro-democratic spirit and care for the marginalized that marked the lives of the Gwangju democracy activists known as the Deulbul Patriots.