Former US vice president Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sharing this year's Nobel Peace Prize underscores the fact that global warming is the primary issue affecting all of mankind in the 21st century -- and that this is something governments, enterprises and the public must take seriously.
Although we know how serious global warming is, we aren't doing anything substantial to remedy the situation.
We make up excuses and prioritize economic growth. China is especially fond of using the economy as an excuse.
But Taiwan is no exception. Although our population makes up only 0.34 percent of the global population, we are responsible for 1 percent of the world's carbon-dioxide emissions. Over the past decade, the nation's per capita carbon-dioxide emissions have increased steadily by 5.6 percent.
The nation emits around 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per year -- as much as the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- and yet its GDP is lower. It is true that Taiwan's GDP has increased gradually in recent years, but energy productivity -- production per liter of oil -- remains unchanged. In other words, the economic growth rate is closely linked to energy consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions.
This poses a dilemma: It would seem that further economic development will inevitably mean more greenhouse gases.
The OECD member countries have been making efforts to combat the link between GDP and carbon-dioxide emissions. Before 1999, the OECD countries' GDPs and carbon-dioxide emissions were increasing at the same rate. However, since 2000, their carbon-dioxide emissions have remained virtually unchanged, while their GDPs have continued to increase.
The most obvious example is Denmark, where GDP grew by 20 percent with almost no changes in energy consumption between 1995 and 2005, and its carbon-dioxide emissions dropped almost 20 percent. This is the most successful example of cutting GDP growth from carbon-dioxide emissions.
Denmark has made crucial adjustments to its industries, sparing no effort to promote non-carbon industries, including financial, service, creative and cultural industries.
In addition, it has greatly expanded its use of renewable energy. Denmark hopes to raise the use of renewable energy from 15 percent to 25 percent by 2025, mainly with bioenergy.
Taiwan has also been working hard in this direction, installing a number of wind-power facilities, but only managing to increase the proportion of renewable energy used by less than 1 percent. What's more, since our wind-power generators have all been imported from other countries and cost a lot of money, it hasn't contributed much to domestic economic growth. In addition, the high cost of producing renewable energy means that the government has had to subsidize it.
Only by developing local manufacturing processes, products and equipment that help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions can we delink GDP growth from emissions. Examples are energy-efficient heat insulation materials and power-generating biogas facilities.
Still, Taiwan must keep in mind that spending a few hundred million NT dollars on a couple of wind-power generators may generate more electricity than the biogas produced by a sewage water plant, but that doesn't mean the nation should neglect investing in better sewage water plants. The nation must carefully weight its strategy.
Chen Wen-ching is a research fellow at the Industrial Technology Research Institute.
Translated by Ted Yang
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