The Kaohsiung City Government recently approved the Autonomous Act on Levying Carbon Dioxide Tax (碳稅徵收自治條例), which allows it to tax polluting businesses.
Director-General of the city’s Bureau of Finance Lei Chung-dar (雷仲達) said on Tuesday that the act was meant to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide in Kaohsiung, one of the major industrial cities in Taiwan.
The act requires businesses in the city that emit more than 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year to pay a “carbon dioxide tax” to the city government, Lei said.
Businesses whose annual carbon dioxide emissions do not exceed 2 million tonnes would be obliged to pay NT$50 for each tonne. Businesses that emit between 2 million tonnes and 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year will have to pay NT$100 million (US$2.8 million).
Businesses with emissions between 4 million tonnes and 6 million tonnes are required to pay NT$220 million, while companies whose annual emissions exceed 10 million tonnes will have to pay NT$700 million.
Lei said the Act targets polluting sectors such as the steel industry, the petroleum industry and the machinery industry, adding that the Act was expected to bring about NT$2.8 billion in tax revenue each year, the majority of which would come from China Steel Corp (中鋼), Taiwan Power Co’s (台電) power plant in Dalin (大林) and CPC Corp, Taiwan’s (台灣中油) refinery in Kaohsiung.
Lei said that although the central government had reservations about levying a carbon dioxide tax, Hualien and Yunlin counties had passed similar regulations.
“As Kaohsiung is an industrial city, it is responsible for massive carbon dioxide emissions. The city government has tried to improve the situation over the years to ensure sustainability of the environment,” Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said.
“It is a global trend to tax polluting industries,” she said.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
RSS