An alliance of non-governmental organizations yesterday said it would start monitoring a NT$3 billion (US$95.8 million) energy conservation project implemented by the Executive Yuan in March.
Green Citizen Action Alliance deputy secretary-general Hung Shen-han (洪申翰) told a news conference in Taipei that he and his fellow environmental campaigners would start visiting local governments across the nation to learn what measures they have taken to cut electricity use.
The Executive Yuan project aims to fund conservation efforts undertaken by local governments.
Photo: CNA
Local government efforts are to be evaluated based on whether a panel comprising environmental campaigners and experts from the public are introduced; whether bylaws to facilitate conservation efforts are formulated; whether local governments have identified the areas where the most electricity is consumed; and how many resources the governments allocate to achieve energy efficiency, Hung said.
Local governments that cap power consumption until the end of September and consider the energy needs of disadvantaged residents would receive “bonus points,” he said.
Energy conservation plans proposed by local governments are mostly half-formed and lack strategies to boost civic participation, he said.
Citing a similar project initiated by the Seoul Metropolitan Government in South Korea in which the municipal government issued subsidies to residents who installed solar panels on their roofs and reportedly saved an amount of energy equivalent to the installed capacity of a nuclear power plant, he said that public engagement would play a pivotal role if the Executive Yuan project is to yield any satisfying result, and called on central and local governments to introduce policies to streamline public efforts.
A project that commands such a large sum should be sustainable, and establishing city bylaws would create a legally binding and well-defined course of action, he said.
Publishing white papers on local government energy policies and founding governing bodies to monitor conservation progress could be included in such bylaws, he added.
The state-run Taiwan Power Co should improve its insufficient data and dutifully publish information regarding the nation’s power consumption by identifying the industries that use the most energy, he said.
Yang Shun-mei (楊順美), secretary-general of antinuclear group Mom Loves Taiwan, said that the only government effort to promote the energy consumption project she has seen so far is a poster in a community laundry shop.
She said that the government announces similar projects every year, but this is the first time that a project has been given such a large amount of money and that it must not be limited to chanting slogans.
TENSE SITUATION: If the storm does not bring rain, Taiwan might have to wait until next month amid water scarcity in the center and south, an expert said Typhoon Surigae is to bring rain to the nation’s east coast and mountainous areas in central and southern Taiwan from Wednesday to Friday, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the typhoon’s center was 1,170km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The radius of the storm was 280km, and it was moving northwest at 9kph, with a maximum wind speed of 198kph. The bureau forecasts that the storm would switch to a northerly direction when approaching the east coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines on Wednesday, CWB forecaster Lin Ding-yi (林定宜) said, adding that Surigae would
SEEKING CLARITY: Some members of the US delegation asked KMT legislators in a meeting to address their party’s position on the so-called ‘1992 consensus,’ sources said A US delegation tasked by US President Joe Biden to reaffirm the country’s commitment to its partnership with Taiwan yesterday wrapped up a three-day visit to Taipei. Former US senator Chris Dodd, former US deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, and US Department of State Office of Taiwan Coordination Director Dan Biers departed at 11:20am on a private jet. The members of the delegation, all friends of Biden, arrived on Wednesday and met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and other government officials. During the three-day visit, the delegation also met with six members of the Legislative
Taipei’s street names should reflect a “Taiwanese spirit,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said in an online video released yesterday, in which he asked why many of them are named after locations in China. In a three-minute video uploaded to a Facebook page called “Taiwanese Uncle Ko Wen-je” (台灣阿北柯文哲), the mayor suggested changing the names of Taipei streets. The page’s banner was a photograph of Ko on Jade Mountain’s (玉山) main peak. The page was closed at about noon, about four hours after it was made public. Ko said that street names in the capital named “Ningxia,” “Tibet,” “Beiping” — an old name for
‘AN EXCUSE’: The intent of Beijing’s incursions was ‘intimidation and coercion,’ a senior US official said, adding that China was using the US to justify its actions Chinese carrier drills and stepped-up incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the past few weeks are meant to send a message to Washington to stand down and back off, security sources in Taipei said. The increased activity — which China, unusually, described as “combat drills” on Wednesday — has raised alarm in both Taipei and Washington, although security officials do not see it as a sign of an imminent attack. Rather, at least some of the exercises are practicing “access denial” maneuvers to prevent foreign forces from coming to Taipei’s defense in a war, one official familiar with Taiwan’s security
RSS