The nation's semiconductor industry will respond to challenges posed by climate change by working with the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in manufacturing processes.
Representatives of semiconductor firms yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the EPA to measure, record and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
Semiconductor manufacturers employ a variety of greenhouse gases, known as perfluorocarbons (PFCs), to create circuit patterns on silicon wafers, among other uses. These gases, if released into the atmosphere, have a greater negative environmental impact than carbon dioxide, the excess production of which is thought to be one of the major causes of global warming.
EPA Minister Chang Kwo-lung (
Under the voluntary initiative, the TSIA will encourage its members to reduce PFC emissions to 0.73 million tonnes (carbon equivalent) per year by 2010.
In August last year, Taiwan's growing thin-film transistor liquid-crystal-display (TFT-LCD) industry -- which has a 30 percent global market share -- signed a similar MOU with the EPA.
Although the international community has made carbon dioxide the major target in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, the widespread use of PFCs in high-tech firms producing semiconductors and TFT-LCD has resulted in increasing environmental concern over the years, the EPA said.
However, one environmentalist told the Taipei Times that the EPA didn't seem to take the primary problem of carbon-dioxide emissions as seriously as it should.
"The EPA should carefully review the Cabinet's two proposed economic development projects for petrochemicals and steel in order to demonstrate its resolve in cutting all greenhouse-gas emissions," Environmental Quality Protection Foundation secretary-general Eric Liou (劉銘龍) told reporters.
Government statistics estimate that 23 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will be produced every year as a result of the new projects -- amounting to nearly 10 percent of the nation's total carbon dioxide emissions in 2000.
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