Taiwan should enshrine in law its goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, environmental experts said yesterday, calling on lawmakers to urgently pass a climate change bill that is being deliberated.
Stipulating net-zero targets in law would establish a governmental duty to act on climate change regardless of which political party is in power, said Hsu Huang-hsiung (許晃雄), the director of Academia Sinica’s Center for Environmental Changes.
A climate law would help the government carry out the complex efforts needed to tackle climate change, such as climate impact studies, policy design and carbon reduction technology research, he said.
Photo: Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times
Creating legislation to reach net-zero emissions goals would put Taiwan in league with 137 other governments that have made similar pledges, which account for about 90 percent of the world’s GDP and 88 percent of emissions, he added.
The UK was the first state to make achieving carbon neutrality a legal obligation, Hsu said.
The UK’s Climate Change Act 2008, which deems dealing with climate change a strategic goal — established an comprehensive regulatory system to reduce carbon emissions while growing the economy, he said.
Carbon neutrality laws can take many forms and not all of them are as comprehensive and technically oriented as the British law, Environmental Rights Foundation researcher Ni Mao-ting (倪茂庭) said.
Climate change laws in Germany and Denmark are brief documents of 10 to 20 articles pointing the government in the right direction without specifying a method that must be utilized, Ni said.
In contrast, the British law offers detailed guidance on matters including the principles concerning carbon trading, he said.
Carbon taxes and emissions trading systems are also important policy instruments that raise transaction costs for emission-generating activities to curb their use, Ni said.
According to the World Bank’s State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2021 report, the price of carbon varies greatly in the 64 carbon pricing systems established by governments across the globe, he said.
Last year, Sweden had the highest carbon price at US$137 per tonne, while Switzerland had the second-highest at US$101 per tonne, Ni said.
The EU had a carbon price of US$50 per tonne, South Korea US$16 per tonne and Japan US$3 per tonne, while Poland and Ukraine had the lowest prices at less than US$1 per tonne, he said.
However, the EU’s carbon prices this year rose to more than US$70 per tonne, approaching US$100 per tonne at times, Ni said, adding that analysts expect prices to increase further.
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