A top-down climate change adaptation policy for the energy industry is crucial to Taiwan’s efforts to develop environmental sustainability, foreign and local experts said on Thursday at a forum on a low-carbon economy.
Regulations aimed at reducing the harm to the environment caused by global warming needs to be systematically directed by the government for better risk management, a British expert said.
“We have to understand those risks, and we need to have the right regulations in place,” said Michael Harvey Lord, senior adviser to the UK’s Climate Change Environment Agency.
A visioning policy could help both the authorities and the public think long-term, Lord said.
Lord added that his country has been doing so since the government passed its Climate Change Act in 2008.
Under the scheme, the UK government is able to set planning guidelines for large energy infrastructure projects through helping operators assess their vulnerability to climate change, Lord said.
Taiwan is heading in a similar direction, said Wu Chih-wei, an official from the Bureau of Energy.
Having passed a climate change adaptation framework of its own in June, the government has been more aggressively learning from countries like the UK to help the domestic energy industry identify risks and come up with possible solutions.
“In addition to the industry, we are working to raise public awareness about the importance of dealing with climate change in advance because it is an urgent issue that could affect all aspects of life,” Wu said.
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