Last month, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) spoke of his “six discourses for the nation” (六國論) on his second anniversary in office. He envisioned Taiwan embarking on a “golden decade” focusing on innovation, culture, the environment, constitutional governance, social welfare and peace. But will his focus on environmental issues and the government’s perennial promises about energy conservation and carbon emission reductions actually steer Taiwan in a new direction?
This year’s presidential proclamation proudly states that carbon emissions will be reduced to 2000 levels by 2025. This, however, is less impressive than a resolution passed during the 1998 First National Energy Conference, which stated that carbon emissions were to be reduced to 2000 levels by 2020.
The presidential proclamation also said that Taiwan’s emissions in 2008 represented a 4.4 percent reduction from those in 2007 and that energy efficiency had risen by 3.6 percent, thanks to government policies. According to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook last year, the global economic downturn has led to a considerable decline in energy consumption, so much so that overall global carbon emissions fell in 2008 by 2 billion tonnes, or 6 to 7 percent, from the previous year. In other words, Taiwan’s 4 percent fall in emissions during that same period is much less than the global average. Also, the 2008 reduction derived predominantly from international factors. Not only should the government not be taking credit for the reduction, it should be investigating whether excessive energy consumption by industry accounts for the fact that emissions have been reduced less in Taiwan than in other countries.
Despite the current preoccupation with cutting emissions, the government is still pushing for the expansion of energy intensive industries. Take Formosa Plastics’ controversial expansion of its sixth naphtha cracker plant, phase five of which is currently under review, compared with the new Kuokuang Petrochemical plant. The latter is of comparable scale, but according to an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report, its annual carbon emissions would be a quarter to a fifth that of the Formosa Plastics plant. These two plants alone could increase annual emissions by 40 or 50 million tonnes if approved, emissions equivalent to those created by 7 million or 8 million Taiwanese. It’s as if the government is asking the public to conserve energy just so they can offset the huge energy consumption of these industries.
In many recent cases the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has ruled in favor of large corporations and against the public. The Supreme Administrative Court revoked EIA originally approved in 2006 for the Cising Plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park, causing the EPA to express bafflement and accuse the court of deliberately misinterpreting the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法).
Formosa Plastics’ Renwu Plant has recently been found guilty of seriously polluting the local soil and groundwater and in some cases these pollutants have been around 300,000 times official limits. The EPA, however, will not countenance the suspension of work. We hear nothing of the repeated protests of civil groups against the high levels of arsenic in the air around the Hsinchu and Central Science Parks and no company or individual has ever been punished.
President Ma seems to have forgotten what environmental protection means.
Gloria Hsu is a professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences and former chairwoman of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
Reports about Elon Musk planning his own semiconductor fab have sparked anxiety, with some warning that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) could lose key customers to vertical integration. A closer reading suggests a more measured conclusion: Musk is advancing a strategic vision of in-house chip manufacturing, but remains far from replacing the existing foundry ecosystem. For TSMC, the short-term impact is limited; the medium-term challenge lies in supply diversification and pricing pressure, only in the long term could it evolve into a structural threat. The clearest signal is Musk’s announcement that Tesla and SpaceX plan to develop a fab project dubbed “Terafab”
Most schoolchildren learn that the circumference of the Earth is about 40,000km. They do not learn that the global economy depends on just 160 of those kilometers. Blocking two narrow waterways — the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait — could send the economy back in time, if not to the Stone Age that US President Donald Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran back to, then at least to the mid-20th century, before the Rolling Stones first hit the airwaves. Over the past month and a half, Iran has turned the Strait of Hormuz, which is about 39km wide at
The ongoing Middle East crisis has reinforced an uncomfortable truth for Taiwan: In an increasingly interconnected and volatile world, distant wars rarely remain distant. What began as a regional confrontation between the US, Israel and Iran has evolved into a strategic shock wave reverberating far beyond the Persian Gulf. For Taiwan, the consequences are immediate, material and deeply unsettling. From Taipei’s perspective, the conflict has exposed two vulnerabilities — Taiwan’s dependence on imported energy and the risks created when Washington’s military attention is diverted. Together, they offer a preview of the pressures Taiwan might increasingly face in an era of overlapping geopolitical
RSS