Taiwanese companies need to work on decarbonizing or risk being “excluded from the supply chains of the future,” the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Speaking at a forum for decarbonation organized by the Chinese National Federation Industries (CNFI, 全國工業總會), Bureau of Foreign Trade Deputy Director-General Cynthia Kiang (江文若) said that now is the time for Taiwanese companies to start preparing for requirements from countries and companies for greener supply chains and clear accounting of carbon emissions.
The EU in July announced the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), under which products produced with a large carbon footprint would face tariffs starting in 2026, Kiang said.
Photo: Lin Jin-hua, Taipei Times
The law’s primary goal is to prevent products with large carbon footprints from competing with those with low footprints made in the EU.
“The 2023 date for the beginning of implementation is extremely challenging,” Kiang said.
Although Taiwanese exports to the EU are limited compared with China, the US and other countries, the trend toward demanding better accounting of carbon emissions and tariffs for higher-carbon products would become increasingly worldwide, Kiang said.
“More important than the direct export of goods to Europe, [Taiwanese businesses] need to take notice of the carbon requirements of major international companies,” Kiang said. “Otherwise they are at risk of being excluded from the global supply chain.”
It is not just tech companies such as Google and Amazon that have made commitments to greening their supply chains, footwear brand Nike has as well, leading to Taiwanese shoemaker Pou Chen Corp (寶成工業), the world’s largest manufacturer of branded athletic and casual footwear, to commit to stopping carbon emissions growth starting in 2025, Kiang said.
“The Bureau of Foreign Trade has been assisting exporters with tracking their carbon footprints whether they are in textile or electronics,” Kiang said. “We wish to accelerate the process of international recognition for our companies as part of the circular economy.”
At the same forum, China Steel Corp executive vice president Wang Shyi-chin (王錫欽) said that the company would be looking to a foundry that uses hydrogen rather than coal to make steel.
“To reach our eventual goal of reducing carbon emissions by 20 percent, we can replace some iron ore with recycled iron scrap, replace coal with hydrogen fuel, and capture more of the gas at the top of the foundry to generate electricity,” Wang said. “By refining our procedures, we can create a lower-carbon or even eventually zero carbon steel.
China Steel hopes to reduce carbon emissions by 7 percent by 2025 and achieve carbon neutrality in the same year, in line with the government’s goal for Taiwan to be Carbon Neutral by 2025.
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
AVIATION BOOM: CAL is to renew its passenger and cargo fleets starting next year on record profits as aviation continues to return to pre-pandemic levels China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) yesterday said it is optimistic about next year’s business outlook, as the airline continues to renew its fleet on expectations that global passenger traffic would maintain steady growth and air cargo demand would remain strong. From next year to 2028, the airline is to welcome a new Boeing Co 787 fleet — 18 787-9 and six 787-10 passenger aircraft — to cover regional and medium to long-haul destinations, CAL chairman Hsieh Shih-chien (謝世謙) said at an investors’ conference in Taipei. The airline would also continue to introduce Airbus SE 321neo passenger planes and Boeing 777F cargo jets,
RSS