The nation has to wait for the next Cabinet to set preliminary carbon reduction goals and despite a long-term reduction plan put forward last year by the Executive Yuan, power sector carbon emissions are likely to increase, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) said yesterday.
In a question-and-answer session at a meeting of the Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee at the legislature in Taipei to discuss Taiwan’s carbon reduction policy following the Paris Climate Change Conference last year, EPA Minister Wei Kuo-yen (魏國彥) said the scope and objective of the first phase of the Executive Yuan’s plan could not be determined until the next Cabinet takes office, although the EPA is set to keep this year’s emissions below 2013 levels, or 249 million tonnes.
The Executive Yuan proposed the intended nationally determined contribution (INDC) in September last year, which aims to achieve a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, equivalent to a 20 percent reduction from 2005 levels.
Effective carbon reduction measures should include financial stimulus plans, phasing-out of fossil fuel subsidies, establishment of an energy tax and a carbon pricing system to achieve the goals of the INDC, but those ideas are unlikely to become specific policies before the next government because it takes months of planning, Wei said, adding that the EPA said last year it would announce the nation’s first five-year plan for carbon emission reductions this year.
“The government is taking care of the nation for an interim period, and president-elect Tsai Ing-wen [蔡英文] has her own ideas about carbon reduction issues, so we should leave the task to the new government to decide and schedule the objectives of the five-year plan,” Wei said.
Chinese Nationalist Party Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said the nation’s carbon emissions continued to increase, from 248 million tonnes in 2010 to 262 million tonnes last year.
Chiang asked what caused the increase and what the EPA has done to reduce carbon emissions.
Wei said the steep decline of oil prices has boosted fossil fuel consumption and increased carbon emissions.
The EPA helped provide a legal weapon for carbon emissions reduction with the formulation of the INDC and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act (溫室氣體減量法), Wei said.
Meanwhile, answering KMT Legislator Lee Yan-hsiu’s (李彥秀) question about the possibility of replacing fossil-fuel generated power with renewable energy sources, Taipower vice president Chung Ping-li (鍾炳利) said the nation could not achieve zero carbon emissions in 10 years, while Taipower’s carbon emissions are likely to continue to increase.
“The power industry will produce more carbon emissions in the short term before natural gas-fired power generation and renewable energy sources can make up for the shortfall of electricity created by decommissioning nuclear plants, which account for 18.6 percent of the nation’s total power generation. Carbon emissions will increase before they can be lowered,” Chung said.
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