Environment ministry staff cut chemical-report work to 30 minutes with AI tools

South Korea's environment ministry said Wednesday that staff teams drawn from the ministry and its affiliated agencies have built artificial intelligence tools that cut the time needed to prepare a chemical emissions report from eight hours to 30 minutes, part of a programme that produced 20 projects between July and September.

The Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment held an event at Post Tower in central Seoul to share results from its "Climate AI Friends" programme and award ministerial prizes to the strongest projects. The initiative paired ministry officials with employees of affiliated and subordinate organisations to learn AI and apply it to problems they face in their own work.

The top prize in the service planning and implementation category went to a three-member team named "Iri Three Siblings," which built a system that automates the survey of chemical substances released from workplaces and helps verify the submitted data. Under the Chemical Substances Control Act, workplaces must report the volume of chemicals they release, a process that runs to about 7,190 sites a year as of 2025. The team said its system could cut the paperwork to 30 minutes from eight hours and would allow all 7,190 workplaces to be checked. The ministry said it will seek a budget to put the system into day-to-day use.

In the work automation category, the top prize went to "Climate Companion," a team of one ministry official and two employees of Korea East-West Power. It developed an "AI Navigator" that reads incoming electronic documents and IT requests and routes each to the right department and staff member. Korea East-West Power plans to roll the system out across the company in December to cut the time spent assigning work and reduce misrouting.

"It is highly meaningful that employees who know the field well cooperated as one team across institutional boundaries to build the solutions they needed themselves," First Vice Minister Keum Han-seung said. He added that the ministry will keep pushing AI and digital transformation with its affiliated organisations so that the results reach the public services people use.

Runner-up prizes went to two further teams. "Our Neighbourhood Now," made up of ministry and National Institute of Environmental Research staff, maps local development projects and offers plain-language summaries of environmental impact assessments to improve residents' access to information. "Chemical Safety Cheat Key," a three-person team from the National Institute of Chemical Safety, built a system that supports the first response to chemical accidents by searching for response resources and evacuation sites and drafting evacuation notices for residents. It is being piloted with local government officials handling chemical accidents.

Eight teams in total presented their work at the event, and Kim Tae-yoo, chief executive of consulting firm Growth & Company, gave a lecture on using AI at work. Other entries commended at the event included a tool for searching and comparing office documents, one that recommends suitable packaging sizes, and one that suggests causes and remedies for power plant equipment failures.