The number of buildings in Taiwan receiving or being pre-approved for green building certification has risen almost 70 times in eight years, to 349 last year from five in 2000, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said yesterday.
Considerable progress had been made promoting sustainable buildings since the Ministry of the Interior launched its green building program in 2001, the CEPD said.
As of September this year, 2,295 buildings have been certified as “green buildings,” and they have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 521,000 tonnes annually and saved users NT$2.16 billion (US$66.5 million) in electricity and water charges.
Taiwan became the fourth country in the world to implement a green building certification protocol when it introduced its unique EEWH (ecology, energy saving, waste reduction and health) system in 1999.
The system, specially tailored to account for Taiwan’s tropical and subtropical climate, considers nine indicators in the four categories to determine whether a building meets “green” criteria.
Taiwan was also the first country in which the government took the lead in promoting the initiative, renovating public buildings and requiring them to meet the criteria, while including special clauses in its building code on sustainability.
Last year, Taiwan launched a four-year program to promote ecological cities and green buildings. It is expected to spend NT$2 billion by 2011 on renovating metropolitan districts and traditional street areas, improving interior green design technology and establishing a market mechanism for green building materials, the CEPD said.
The four-year project is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by an additional 270,000 tonnes every year and lower electricity and water fees by NT$890 million a year.
The CEPD also said the government would look to place controls on projects with large construction sites to improve the quality of living in cities.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS