The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday extended the subsidy for diesel vehicle owners to purchase new, less-polluting cars, following protests over the past month against tighter emissions standards.
The Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法) amendments passed on June 25 empowered the EPA to tighten emission standards for vehicles more than 10 years old.
Owners of scooters and trucks have held several demonstrations against the plan, saying that their livelihoods might be affected if their vehicles are banned and that the EPA should target bigger pollution emitters such as factories and power plants instead of economically disadvantaged people.
The agency is still drafting emissions standards for older cars, but it has been subsidizing new car purchases since August last year, EPA Department of Air Quality Protection and Noise Control Director-General Tsai Hung-teh (蔡鴻德) told a news conference yesterday.
Owners of diesel vehicles weighing more than 3.5 tonnes and made before June 30, 1999, can receive a subsidy of NT$50,000 to NT$400,000 (US$1,632 to US$13,053) to replace the vehicle, he said, adding that the subsidy, instead of stopping next year, is to be extended to 2022.
The EPA estimates that replacing old diesel cars by 2022 would reduce annual of PM2.5 emissions — fine particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or smaller — by about 4,000 tonnes.
“To further alleviate the financial burden of replacing diesel cars, the EPA is working with the Small and Medium Enterprise Credit Guarantee Fund to procure loans with interest rates of only 3 to 5 percent,” Tsai said, adding that from September, the EPA would subsidize 1 percent of the loan interest, with the amount gradually decreasing to 0.55 percent by 2022,.
Owners are required to install exhaust filters on diesel cars made after Sept. 30, 2006, but the EPA is also offering a subsidy of NT$70,000 to NT$150,000 for those owners to purchase a new vehicle, he said.
The agency has also negotiated with the Ministry of Finance to provide a tax refund of NT$50,000 to people who scrap old diesel cars and buy a new vehicle, Tsai added.
Air pollution affects every member of the public, EPA Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said, adding that people should unite to reduce pollution from mobile sources, which makes up about one-third of the nation’s total pollution.
The EPA has other regulations that govern pollution emitted by factories, he added.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift