The COVID-19 pandemic is stimulating a growing trend of adopting environmental reforms as part of a green recovery. As businesses start to reopen from lockdowns, policymakers have been increasing subsidies for green energy and urban mobility to not only cut carbon emissions, but also reduce the risk of contagion.
Over the past few months, governments in major European cities, including Berlin, London, Milan and Paris, have boosted incentives for purchasing and using bicycles, as well as building temporary bicycle lanes for people to commute easily. France plans to invest 30 billion euros (US$35.45 billion) to build cycling infrastructure, while Italy has earmarked 50 billion euros to subsidize bicycle purchases.
With those incentives, Taiwanese bicycle maker Merida Industry said that the electric bicycle penetration rate in Western Europe would reach about 60 percent in 2025, compared with 33 percent last year.
In Taiwan, the government has backpedaled on its support for electric scooters, as the fallout of the pandemic has been less severe here. Starting in January, no more incentives are to be offered to purchase electric scooters, even as the industry remains in its infancy and leading start-up Gogoro is struggling to eke out a profit. Meanwhile, central and local governments are offering equal subsidies to replace old four-stroke scooters with electric or new gasoline-powered scooters.
That has led to a slump in electric scooter sales as the price gap widens significantly. In July, sales of electric scooters plummeted about 19 percent year-on-year to 10,146 vehicles. During the January-to-July period, aggregated sales of electric scooters dipped at an annual pace of 20 percent to 52,379 units. Overall sales of scooters rose 11.5 percent year-on-year in July, hitting the highest level this year as more urban commuters avoided public transportation due to concerns of catching COVID-19.
As a result, electric scooter manufacturers face a setback in the market share battle. Their market share fell to 10 percent in the first seven months of this year, from 15 percent at the end of last year, when Japan’s Yamaha Motor, Aeon Motor and Motive Power Industry joined the “Power by Gogoro Network.” Cumulatively, electric scooters only make up 2 percent of the nation’s total scooters.
The Cabinet is considering almost doubling its incentives this year for retiring older scooters for new ones to NT$651 million (US$22.52 million) from its original estimate of NT$355 million, as people are jumping on the opportunity to replace their vehicles. However, the policy is likely to have less effect on reducing toxic emissions, as most consumers are opting to buy gasoline-powered models over electric ones, given the sliding fuel costs due to cheaper global oil prices.
This development would sabotage the government’s plan to ban sales of gasoline-powered scooters by 2035, as part of its broader efforts by 2050 to cut carbon emissions to 50 percent of the amount produced in 2005. To hit that target, Taiwan needs to boost adoption of electric scooters to 5 million units by 2025, a study by National Taiwan University’s Risk Society and Policy Research Center showed.
The government should continue to support electric scooters with more subsidies, which are the major driver of their adoption, and promote public transportation and other greener methods of urban mobility. It should also develop measures to speed up the transformation of gasoline-powered scooter makers such as Kwang Yang Motor. Otherwise, Taiwan will lag far behind the rest of the world in pushing for a green recovery in the post-COVID-19 era.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under