Taiwan Today

Taiwan will achieve greater energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reductions while regularly reviewing progress on reaching targets set out under the Paris Agreement, Premier Lin Chuan said Aug. 16 at the first committee meeting of the Energy and Carbon Emission Reductions Office under the Executive Yuan. “As a member of the international community and an advanced economy, Taiwan is obliged to tackle global warming and climate change,” Lin said “Establishment of this office is significant at a time when these issues are the primary concern of every nation.” According to Lin, the office has three initial goals: boosting solar power generation, lifting wind power generation and industry-related investment, and transforming Shalun Village of southern Taiwan’s Tainan City into a center for green energy R&D. Under the first, the office will assist the Ministry of Economic Affairs in implementing Sept. 1 a two-year project aimed at increasing solar power installed capacity to 1.44 gigawatts in two years’ time. The latest MOEA statistics reveal that Taiwan had installed capacity of 832 megawatts in 2015. The second will see the office help the MOEA draft a four-year plan aimed at boosting wind power and related economic activity. Set for review and approval by the Executive Yuan in September, the plan seeks to lift offshore wind power installed capacity to 520 MW and attract private investment of NT$93.6 billion (US$3 billion). Under the third, the office will cooperate with the Ministry of Science and Technology in finalizing a proposal for Shalun Green Science City. It is expected that the initiative will see SGSC emerge as a national energy decision-making center coordinating academic, private and public sector efforts in pursuit of securing a sustainable energy future for Taiwan. According to the agreement reached at the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP21, in December 2015, signatories agreed a long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 C above pre-industrial levels and to limit the increase to 1.5 C. The government is committed to capping the carbon emissions of Taiwan’s five major economic sectors—agriculture, commercial, energy, industrial, residential, transportation—at 251.04 million tons this year. Cutting annual output to the average of 2012 to 2014 levels is in line with the goals laid out in Taiwan’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act of July 2015. It also follows the roadmap to achieving the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, under which greenhouse gasses are to drop to 214 million tons by 2030. This is 20 percent lower than the 2005 level, and will bring the national total in 2050 to half that of 2005. (WF-E) Write to Taiwan Today at ttonline@mofa.gov.tw