Building Taipei County as the First Low-CO2 City in Taiwan

TAIPEI, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Global Warming, Climate Change catch the whole world’s attentions. All countries implement GHG (Green House Gas) reduction strategies. Furthermore, the mayors of big cities take on reduction responsibilities to promote related works. Taipei County is the biggest county in Taiwan and faces the most risk of Climate Change. We have to let all residents know the danger of Global Warming and make effort in it.

Taipei County sets 20% reduction target in 20 years (2006 as base year and 2026 reduces 20% compared with 2006) and put Save Energy, Green Traffic, Recycling (including green energy), Lo-CO2 Life into actions in divisions of community, school, public, business and specific districts. Four features are as follow:

1.Establishing Duty-Organism

On October 1, 2007, Taipei County became fulfilling to become a Direct-controlled Municipality. At the same time, the Low-Carbon Community Development Center was established by the Taipei County EPB (Environmental Protection Bureau) which is responsible to promote emission reductions in residential and commercial sectors. This is the first official GHG reduction agency. In addition, the “Sustainable Environment Education Center” and “Clean Production Center” were established to promote climate change and GHG emission reduction related topics in school and industries.

2.County Government

The “Low Carbon Society Action Program Project Team” was leaded by the Deputy Magistrate with representatives from all county departments. Each department has to come up with its own program to promote emission reduction in their responsible areas. The program progress will be monitored periodically.

3.Eagerly Motivated

As of 2007, the Taipei County Government has promoted various GHG reduction programs, the following are our achievements:

(1)Prohibit using disposable utensils which reduced half amount of wastes and 803 tons of carbon dioxide.

(2)Cooperate with the Taipei City, Keelung City, Tao Yuan County, and Yilan County by creating an online carpool system with a total of approximately 6,300 members and 1,400 routes posted.

(3)Demonstrate a “Public Bicycle Lease” system which will later on coordinate with convenient stores to form a bicycle lease network.

(4)Promote low pollution vehicles by switching County owned vehicles to LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) cars or selecting low pollution car type. Encourage taxi drivers to modify their cars to LPG cars.

(5)Plant 380 million trees

(6)Construct a “Low Carbon Demonstration Area,” promote low carbon travel.

(7)Promote low carbon technology

(8)Introduce ESCO (Energy Service Company) services to the communities, sponsor communities and office building to install efficient lighting.

It is extremely difficult to promote GHG emission reductions from a City due to lack of legislative support. We do not expect all of our residents to become environment protectors, however, we will try our best to motive them and seek for their participations. In addition, it is difficult to motive the industries without financial sponsorship. Due to the unique political situation that Taiwan faced, we have difficulties in joining international organization such as the United Nation which limits our supports and involvements in international climate change related programs. Even though Taiwan is excluded from the Kyoto Protocol established by the United Nation, we still feel that reducing the GHG emission is our responsibility as a global citizen to the world. To overcome this situation, the Taipei County joined the ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability hoping to establish a communicate channel with other member cities and to learn from their experiences.