To achieve the goal of establishing low-carbon homeland in the next decade in Taiwan, Environmental Protection Administration has launched the ―Project of Developing the Low-Carbon Community (LCC)‖ since the beginning of 2010. The main objectives in the first-year project were: (1) to formulate ―Low-Carbon Community Evaluation Criteria System‖; (2) to assist local governments to set up ―Low-Carbon Community Promoting Committee‖; (3) to promote LCC concept and provide related counseling; (4) to assist each of 24 county/city governments to build up at least one exampled LCC; (5) to collect related information worldwide and implement counseling service and symposiums on the development of LCC. In the project, a preliminary ―Low-Carbon Community Evaluation Criteria System‖ was drafted through studying the related literature worldwide. Three meetings gathering professionals, experts and scholars were further held to extract useful information from comments provided for revising the drafted system. The ―Low-Carbon Community Promotion Committee‖ and related documents of its framework were established in each of the 24 country/city governments under the guidance of the project. To promote LCC concept to the public, a counseling hotline service and a call-in radio broadcasts service both concerning energy conservation and carbon reduction were provided, and tours visiting the communities with low-carbon demonstration were also held. The best work of ―Low-Carbon Community Label‖ was selected in an open label-design contest. This will be modified based on governmental policy of LCC in the future, and be converted into the real LCC Label. The label will be awarded to the community that can meet the LCC criteria so as to recognize its efforts in carbon reduction and make the community an LCC example which can be learned by other communities. The Manual for Surveying and Selecting Low-Carbon Community was set up and then used to select the most suitable community for low-carbon promotion. This manual included qualification of the recommended community, the process of recommendation, principles for selection, site survey and evaluation procedurals etc., which can be followed by local governments recommending the community or communities willing to be a LCC. Finally, 50 proposed communities were selected from the 92 communities recommended by local governments through the primary and secondary survey/evaluation procedurals. The 24 communities of those, from the top one of the ranking for each county/city, were additionally diagnosed and planned by experts for carbon reduction potential. Information from successful low-carbon communities or cities worldwide were gathered and investigated so as to conclude the valuable experiences in construction, strategies and policies for promoting low-carbon communities or cities. By comparing these experiences, current related policies in Taiwan with their feasibility were also analyzed. The results of the first-year project would be an important basis and reference for conducting the project of promoting low-carbon homeland in the future.

Low-carbon community;Low-Carbon Community Evaluation Criteria System;low-carbon homeland