Bossley said she was aware that the nation has problems securing funding for CDC projects because of the China issue, but said that this has given Taiwan complete freedom to trade in ways it wants to trade. She also said she saw the nation's potential to become a price-setting carbon trading hub as it develops its own GHG policy.
"If Taiwan builds a policy based on GHG emission reductions and chooses the least-cost instrument to achieve that objective, it gives itself the possibility of buying any of these ranges of internationally-traded instruments as its own compliance strategy," Bossley said.
The vision of a national carbon market, however, was met with skepticism by the nation's legislators. So far, 10 articles related to carbon trading schemes in the GHG emissions reduction act have been reserved for further discussions as lawmakers request more deliberation.
"You are asking profitable energy-intensive industries to voluntarily cut their GHG emissions," said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lwo Shih-hsiung (羅世雄). "It's not going to be easy."
Wu Chih-wei (吳志偉), a technical specialist at the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Energy Bureau, said manufacturers are mostly concerned about how the government plans to distribute the carbon credits and whether they would be meted out in a fair way.
"The distribution plan is a delicate matter," he said. "It needs to be handled very, very carefully."
Besides the distribution of credits, Wu said the nation must be ready to settle other disputes, such as how state corporations use the revenue created through carbon trading.
Wu also said the nation still lacks professionals familiar with the different carbon trading schemes in the international marketplace. Meanwhile, as many people are still relatively ignorant about the importance of climate change, Wu suggested it would take a while before a carbon trading market would emerge in Taiwan.
Yeh Fang-lu (
Yeh added that some companies have chosen to do third-party trading, but he said that the trading must also be certified as effective by creditable agencies.
Yeh said that the administration leans toward following a benchmark rule in giving out carbon credits. He said the administration will first examine a company's emission records in the past and the credits companies receive would be a little under their self-reported values.
"The measure serves as a motivation for them [companies] to reduce emissions," he said.
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