To fulfill its obligations under the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣汙染防制法), the Ministry of Transportation and Communications earlier this month announced plans to abolish the 20km daily toll-free allocation to freeway drivers of diesel vehicles manufactured before June 1999 in the latter half of this year.
The plan would transfer the toll subsidy to electric and hybrid vehicles. In addition, the ministry would prohibit highly polluting vehicles from entering specified “clean air zones.”
These measures are clearly a response to Premier William Lai’s (賴清德) proposal, announced in December last year, that the government should consider introducing a comprehensive ban on the use of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles by 2040.
Efforts to reduce air pollution from mobile sources — especially from gasoline-powered motorcycles and scooters — should include three elements: a system of reward and punishment, usage restrictions and an outright ban. However, while calling for such measures is easy, practical implementation can be problematic.
Abolishing the toll-free allocation is a way to punish owners of more highly polluting vehicles. The ministry estimates that about 80,000 diesel vehicles would be affected by the measure.
The reward element of the policy is in transferring the allocation to drivers of electric and hybrid vehicles, which is similar to the German government’s planned toll collection policy on its Autobahn network.
Since it would be difficult to achieve fast results using reward and punishment alone, advanced economies have started to investigate and plan for even stricter controls. Two of the most active countries in this area are the UK and France, both of which intend to impose a comprehensive ban on the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2040.
As for Germany, there is a misconception that it is to enforce a similar ban 10 years earlier, starting in 2030. This is not the objective of the German federal government’s transport policy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in no hurry to impose a ban, as Germany is one of the world’s leading car manufacturers.
Imposing a ban on the production of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles would not only risk forfeiting the German car industry’s dominant global position and reduce economic growth, it would also risk causing large-scale unemployment — and the resulting impact on social stability could be quite serious. From the German government’s point of view, it would be far too hasty to implement a ban before the German car industry has completed the transition to “clean” technology.
By way of example, US electric car manufacturer Tesla has excellent technology and a brimming order book, but if the company cannot produce its vehicles in sufficient quantities, its efforts will have been in vain.
The transition to the manufacture of electric cars and the production of batteries with ample capacity will be enough of a headache, let alone the need to provide battery charging, power supply, servicing and testing facilities and training for a large number of specialized technicians.
More than 20 million fossil-fuel-powered vehicles are in use in Taiwan, but if the government intends to ban their use by 2040, where is the industrial strategy and supporting growth strategy to encourage the industry’s transition to clean technology?
As it will be difficult to reach a consensus on prohibiting use of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles in the short term — and there is a pressing need to address the problem of air pollution right now — many countries are employing restrictive measures as a way to reduce their use. Such measures typically comprise restrictions on time, location and vehicle type, or are reactive — implemented only when air pollution reaches certain levels.
Starting in 2025, Madrid and Mexico City are to impose location and vehicle type-based restrictions on diesel vehicles entering the cities. Meanwhile, Athens is to impose location-based restrictions on gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles in several years’ time.
The industrial city of Stuttgart, Germany, suffers from severe air pollution similar to that which blights central and southern Taiwan. The municipality proposed restrictions on diesel vehicles when air pollution in the city reaches a certain level, but the plan was dropped following concerns about its constitutionality.
The municipality then proposed implementing a complete ban on the use of all diesel vehicles, but an initial ruling by a German administrative court required the municipality to go back to the drawing board and stipulated that its policy must prioritize alternative means that uphold the basic constitutional freedoms of German citizens.
Returning to Taiwan, it is certainly positive that government departments are drawing up proposals aimed at addressing Taiwan’s air pollution problem. However, the worry is whether government departments will be able to pull together and work as one to formulate a practical and workable policy.
For example, although the government currently provides generous financial subsidies to promote the adoption of electric buses, the program has had little discernible effect, as there is a high value-added threshold as well as a mismatch between financial subsidies available for placing electric buses on new routes and for scrapping and replacing buses on existing routes.
Local governments also have different policies and employ different systems, and it is obvious that the government had not done its homework before attacking bus companies over their unwillingness to upgrade their vehicle fleets or invest in the required means of production.
If the government is serious about achieving the premier’s stated objective of banning the production of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles by 2040, it cannot rely on the transportation ministry’s plans alone to singlehandedly solve the issue.
Cooperation and a concerted effort from all related government departments are required to develop an effective and sustainable growth strategy to solve Taiwan’s air pollution problem.
Wu Jiann-sheng is a professor of civil engineering at National Central University.
Translated by Edward Jones
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