People working in industries that would be most negatively impacted by the government’s net zero carbon emissions policy have an insufficient understanding of what the target is and what its effects are likely to be, a survey published on Wednesday showed.
The Survey on Awareness of Just Transition of High-carbon Industries in Taiwan, published for the second year by National Taiwan University’s Risk Society and Policy Research Center, found that 49.8 percent of respondents said they had little understanding of the government’s net zero policies.
Although that figure is still high, it marks a substantial decrease from last year’s 81.2 percent, center director Chou Kuei-tien (周桂田) told a news conference in Taipei to introduce the report’s findings.
Photo: Liao Chia-ning, Taipei Times
The center surveyed 521 employees, managers and executives working in carbon-intensive industries from October to last month.
The survey showed that 46.8 percent of respondents were worried about the burden of decarbonization on them personally, for example, increased costs being passed on, Chou said, adding that the figure was down from 57.7 percent in last year’s survey.
Young and female employees were the most concerned, he said.
The government should enhance community participation to deepen a “just transition consciousness” and build a strong social foundation for when net zero transition policies are implemented, he said.
Most respondents said that funds collected through carbon fees — scheduled to be collected from 2025 — should be used to boost employment by helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and workers acquire skills needed for success in low-carbon industries, the survey showed.
It showed that 89.9 percent agreed SMEs should be consulted before net zero policies are implemented, while 77.5 percent said the government, companies and employees should have three-way meetings to develop ways to help manage the fallout from the policies.
Chou said that carbon fees should be made a “carbon tax,” as the former is more restrictive.
Article 33 of the Climate Change Response Act (氣候變遷因應法) says that the fees could be used to “assist the central competent agency to execute a just transition” among a list of 13 purposes.
“A carbon tax, administered by the Ministry of Finance, could potentially have a much wider scope of use, as it would be collected by the central government,” Chou said.
David Walther (王瑞庚), program manager at Academia Sinica’s Center for Sustainability Science, said that communication and assistance need to be in place early and be available to all who would be affected to avoid large protests.
Walther also highlighted the importance of an Executive Yuan-led oversight mechanism, instead of each ministry having to cope with net zero issues alone, “such as the Ministry of Agriculture regarding solar power and the Ministry of the Interior regarding national land.”
Following this logic, the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Welfare and Health are yet to be affected by net zero issues and so have not made any moves, he said.
A Cabinet-level directive needs to be issued to coordinate a comprehensive roadmap encompassing every ministry, especially the Ministry of Digital Affairs, which needs to develop “digital sustainability,” he added.
Youth Labor Union 95 director Ray Cheng (鄭中睿) said that the Ministry of Education needs to take a more active role in helping the public prepare for a green transition.
There is a complete lack of human resource planning in the net zero roadmap that the National Development Council released last year, Cheng said.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its