Taiwan and the UK have joined hands to launch a report, titled Carbon pricing options for Taiwan, and would further collaborate on climate action, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said, as the nation prepares to collect a levy on carbon emissions.
The report was the result of its cooperation with the British Office Taipei, the EPA said in a news release on Friday.
The two sides commissioned the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science to evaluate carbon pricing systems for Taiwan, it said.
Josh Burke, policy fellow at the institute and one of the report’s authors, had visited Taiwan early this year to share information on the UK’s carbon pricing policy, it added.
The 49-page report was published on the institute’s Web site on Tuesday.
As a small, export-oriented economy that imports fossil fuels for most of its energy demand, Taiwan faces a range of challenges in reaching its target of lowering greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2050, let alone the more ambitious emissions reductions targets needed to align with global ambitions under the Paris Agreement, the report said.
The report recommends that Taiwan start with a simple carbon levy, initially at a low level, but with a clear trajectory to increase the levy to levels required to meet international climate goals under the Paris Agreement.
Companies would be prepared for such a levy, as opposed to an emissions trading system, because they are familiar with environmental protection fees, it added.
The levy should cover large emitters in the manufacturing and electricity sectors, the report said, adding that the electricity sector in 2017 accounted for 59 percent of Taiwan’s carbon emissions.
If designed well, carbon pricing alongside complementary policies would help Taiwan reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, while growing its economy and playing a part in the international effort to combat climate change, it said.
There is considerable room for Taiwan to implement a carbon price starting from NT$300 per tonne of carbon dioxide, the report said, citing a 2018 survey that showed that on average, respondents were willing to accept a 13.2 percent electricity price hike if that were necessary for integrating more renewables into the power mix.
A carbon pricing policy can be improved by enhancing companies’ capacities to participate and ensuring their early engagement to address concerns, the report said.
In preparing draft amendments to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act (溫室氣體減量及管理法), the EPA is mulling collecting a carbon levy of NT$110 per tonne of carbon dioxide, local media reported in October.
The draft amendments would be forwarded to the Executive Yuan next year, the EPA said at that time.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS