Last month, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) spoke of his “six discourses for the nation” (六國論) on his second anniversary in office. He envisioned Taiwan embarking on a “golden decade” focusing on innovation, culture, the environment, constitutional governance, social welfare and peace. But will his focus on environmental issues and the government’s perennial promises about energy conservation and carbon emission reductions actually steer Taiwan in a new direction?
This year’s presidential proclamation proudly states that carbon emissions will be reduced to 2000 levels by 2025. This, however, is less impressive than a resolution passed during the 1998 First National Energy Conference, which stated that carbon emissions were to be reduced to 2000 levels by 2020.
The presidential proclamation also said that Taiwan’s emissions in 2008 represented a 4.4 percent reduction from those in 2007 and that energy efficiency had risen by 3.6 percent, thanks to government policies. According to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook last year, the global economic downturn has led to a considerable decline in energy consumption, so much so that overall global carbon emissions fell in 2008 by 2 billion tonnes, or 6 to 7 percent, from the previous year. In other words, Taiwan’s 4 percent fall in emissions during that same period is much less than the global average. Also, the 2008 reduction derived predominantly from international factors. Not only should the government not be taking credit for the reduction, it should be investigating whether excessive energy consumption by industry accounts for the fact that emissions have been reduced less in Taiwan than in other countries.
Despite the current preoccupation with cutting emissions, the government is still pushing for the expansion of energy intensive industries. Take Formosa Plastics’ controversial expansion of its sixth naphtha cracker plant, phase five of which is currently under review, compared with the new Kuokuang Petrochemical plant. The latter is of comparable scale, but according to an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report, its annual carbon emissions would be a quarter to a fifth that of the Formosa Plastics plant. These two plants alone could increase annual emissions by 40 or 50 million tonnes if approved, emissions equivalent to those created by 7 million or 8 million Taiwanese. It’s as if the government is asking the public to conserve energy just so they can offset the huge energy consumption of these industries.
In many recent cases the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has ruled in favor of large corporations and against the public. The Supreme Administrative Court revoked EIA originally approved in 2006 for the Cising Plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park, causing the EPA to express bafflement and accuse the court of deliberately misinterpreting the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法).
Formosa Plastics’ Renwu Plant has recently been found guilty of seriously polluting the local soil and groundwater and in some cases these pollutants have been around 300,000 times official limits. The EPA, however, will not countenance the suspension of work. We hear nothing of the repeated protests of civil groups against the high levels of arsenic in the air around the Hsinchu and Central Science Parks and no company or individual has ever been punished.
President Ma seems to have forgotten what environmental protection means.
Gloria Hsu is a professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences and former chairwoman of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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