Today is Earth Day, which presents an opportunity to focus on this year’s theme of “Restore Our Earth” and reflect on whether the government is doing enough to mitigate climate change.
Taiwan’s industrial development was fueled by the exploitation of local and imported natural resources.
However, the nation needs a new economic model to set a sustainable path to a zero-carbon future and keep in line with international trends.
Taiwan is already experiencing the effects of global warming. Greenpeace Taiwan in a report in August last year said that the seas around Taiwan are rising at twice the global average, rendering six municipalities vulnerable to flooding and storm surges.
At the same time, the seawater is getting warmer, exposing Taiwan’s coral reefs to heat stress, which could lead to coral bleaching and the irretrievable loss of biodiversity, a process exacerbated by the falling incidence of typhoons.
No typhoons made landfall in Taiwan last year, a phenomenon attributable to climate change. Even though this has spared Taiwanese their destruction, it has also contributed to the nation’s worst water shortage in 56 years. The shortage is already putting pressure on the availability of water for public, industrial and agricultural use, and would have a major impact on the nation’s economy.
One irony is the political sensitivity of raising electricity prices because of the economic effects of such a move, even though Taiwan’s extremely low electricity prices have contributed to its high levels of carbon emissions.
Taiwan is the fifth-largest per capita carbon emitter in Asia. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act (溫室氣體減量及管理法) stipulates that emissions are to be reduced by 20 percent from 2005 levels and by 50 percent by 2050.
However, the government has said that under the current economic model, Taiwan is not on course to achieve those goals, which already fall short of the levels agreed upon by the international community in the Paris Agreement, and are far behind more ambitious targets set by other countries.
In Asia alone, South Korea and Japan have pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050, while Singapore is aiming to achieve net-zero emissions “as soon as viable.”
Fossil fuels make up 82.23 percent of the nation’s energy mix, Bureau of Energy data show. While the government’s policy of achieving a “nuclear-free homeland” by 2025 is laudable, 11.24 percent of the nation’s energy comes from nuclear power, which means a viable replacement is needed before it can be phased out.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) energy transition plan seeks to increase the share of renewable energy in the nation’s energy mix to 20 percent by 2025. That is either admirably ambitious or foolhardy, considering renewables made up just over 5 percent of electricity generation last year, bureau data show.
The public needs to see that the government has the political will to realize its goals. Tsai is at least trying to implement energy transition, which requires compromise, wisdom, political astuteness and time: The process needs to ensure that an adequate, stable and reliable energy supply is maintained at all times.
Her government must put the nation on course to energy transition, for if the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — which lacks most, if not all, of the aforementioned attributes — returned to power, the progress achieved so far would fall to the wayside.
Tsai needs to be more ambitious. She could start by joining South Korea, Japan, Singapore and other countries in pledging a viable date for Taiwan to become carbon neutral.
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