Taiwan’s sustainability awards should have stricter criteria to avoid suspicions of “greenwashing,” environmental groups said on Thursday, as they warned that some industries, including the semiconductor industry, could be a drag on the nation’s effort to reach its carbon emissions reduction target.
Sustainability awards should have discernable criteria to boost their credibility and avoid suspicion of greenwashing, Green Citizens’ Action Alliance deputy secretary-general Tseng Hung-wen (曾虹文) said at a news conference promoting a report, titled “2024 Corporate Sustainability Reporting Tracker,” published by the groups in Taipei.
Tseng said that 12 of the 64 recipients of the Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Award (TCSA) last year had been previously fined for pollution, including state-owned CPC Corp, Taiwan, which was also found guilty of withholding information.
Tseng said that abiding by the law should be a basic requirement to be considered for such awards, rather than simply one of the evaluation criteria.
The National Sustainable Development Award, the only government-initiated sustainability award evaluated by the groups, allows companies’ subsidiaries to award participants and winners.
Tseng said this renders the award guilty of “spotlighting a particular green feature, but ignoring environmentally damaging activities being conducted elsewhere.”
The report also said that most awardees came from the semiconductor industry, Taiwan’s economic mainstay.
“The semiconductor industry is highly embedded in global supply chains and therefore more transparent than other awardees, but that does not necessarily mean substantial progress in terms of climate action,” said Lin Yi-jiun (林怡均), a researcher at the Taiwan Climate Action Network.
Of the 12 semiconductor industry awardees, only four — ASE Technology, Formosa Advanced Technologies Co, Nanya Technology and UMC — had a 2030 carbon emissions reduction goal that was more or as ambitious as Taiwan’s goal of a 24 percent reduction from 2019 emission levels, Lin said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co has set its 2030 carbon emissions goal as returning to 2020 levels, but that is 15 percent higher than the emissions level in 2019, the report said.
“Only three of the 12 companies used renewables to generate more than 5 percent of all energy consumed, while four have not started to use renewables at all,” Lin added.
Environmental Jurists Association chairman Kalen Chien (簡凱倫) said greenwashing can generally be defined as making pompous promises, but having no practical plans for implementation and concealing significant information.
“The root of the problem lies in the fact that there are no clear and universal standards requiring what should be disclosed and defining what, if not disclosed, would be seen as ‘misleading,’” Chien said.
He called on the Ministry of Environment and the Financial Supervisory Commission to join together and launch “anti-greenwashing guidelines” to define the red lines regarding greenwashing.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
RSS