Climate change is one of the toughest challenges humankind faces in the 21st century. In recent years, extreme weather events occurring all around the world result in significant impacts to humans’ survival, environment, ecology, industry and the economy development. It also reinforces our determination towards a low-carbon development pathway. This trend is an obvious evident during the negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for the shared vision in long-term global climate change mitigation, especially in the form of the low carbon emission development strategies (LEDS). Governments have decided to conclude their negotiations before the end of 2015, and reach a legal framework which will be legally binding to all countries in 2020. In response to the call of commitment for voluntary GHG emissions reduction following the Copenhagen Accord, Taiwan has committed to the voluntary target of reducing its emissions to 30% below the business-as-usual (BAU) emissions baselines in 2020. Thus, the Government is now planning its internal goal of returning to 2005 emissions levels in 2020 (equivalent to cut 2020 emissions to 45% below BAU emissions). Furthermore, the Government has announced the vision of “Golden Decade – Sustainable Environment”. The policy’s objective is to turn climate impacts on Taiwan into opportunities, and then further transit into a low-carbon homeland under sustainable development.
This project’s main tasks include studying Taiwan’s carbon reduction potentials of the LEDS strategic program and its environmental co-benefits achieved through reducing air pollution, planning key carbon reduction and energy conservation strategies and technologies for Taiwan district heating and cooling (DHC) integration development, developing legal infrastructure, promoting sectoral GHG emission reduction actions, establishing cooperation relationship with international low carbon pathway research groups, assisting the EPA in evaluating the performance of the “Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Plans”, and establishing and operate the “Low Carbon Development Pathway Registration Platform”. All scheduled tasks for this project have been completed on schedule.
Collect international sectoral technical data for energy conservation and carbon reduction. Renew national energy service demand and requirement investigation for industrial, residential, service, and transportation sectors. Based on practical examples and framework developed in the world, this project also established a methodology to estimate co-benefits of national energy and environment. The tasks of this project focus on determining the national energy CO2 emissions baseline according to the latest social-economic data, which is introduced to simulate carbon reduction combination, energy conservation effect, and co-benefits as well as costs for energy and environment by LEDS scenarios under the IPCC and governmental CO2 reduction target.
Analyze the development of international district heating, cooling, and power technology. Survey the energy demand and consumption in residential/commercial and industrial sectors in Taiwan. Analyze current law and regulations for promoting the development of district energy supply system. The project has analyzed the database of stationary air pollution sources and given suggestions on promoting the biomass boilers as alternatives to fossil-fuel boilers in industrial sector. Build up the database of air-conditioners and chillers, and complete the effectiveness analysis of floor area on air-conditioning system; Build up the district cooling model in connecting the air-conditioning systems among building #64 (commercial sector) and dormitories # 6 and #7 (residential sector) in the ITRI. Analyze the feasibility of model and evaluate its economic benefits and carbon reduction efficiency. We also analyze the latest technology and strategy for district energy supply in the world, and propose feasible legal framework for comprehensive district energy development.
Analyze the interactive influences on practical measures of various market mechanisms based on other countries’ LEDs economic incentives. Collect the latest development and design data of international LEDs to various market mechanism. Conduct carbon price choice and model content research on the USA, California, Australia, and UK’s market mechanism design. Forecast significant impact factors for Taiwan’s future carbon price according to analyzing the significant factors on the EU, and Australia carbon price simulation. The above practical simulation results and operation scheme experiences will be references for establishing a GHG trading scheme in Taiwan in the future.
Complete the project analysis for “Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Plans” in 2012 and 2013. Establish online format of “Registration Platform” for “Energy Conservation and Carbon Reduction Action Plans”. The project officially announced online procedures for all ministries’ “Year 2013 Action Plans” data submission. Meanwhile, the design of framework and electronic forms for “National GHG Registry Platform” has been accomplished; this project assists ministries to submit relative electronic forms in testing trials.
Low carbon development has been recognized as an important issue during post-Kyoto negotiations for the long-term cooperation under the UNFCCC. Many Annex-I parties have started conducting research on 2050 low carbon development following the initiation of the post-Kyoto negotiations to obtain scientific data and bases for the negotiations. The actions in response to climate change must be comprehensive and inclusive to ensure the integrality of global environment protection. Stressing green technology and broadly operating market mechanism will be two significant factors in facing climate change challenges, which will lead us towards a future with clean energy technology developed on our own. It also helps Taiwan to ensure competitiveness and create more green jobs. The team of this project has assisted the EPA to hold a consultant meeting for promoting 2050 long-term carbon reduction strategy, which constructs long-term communication models for renewable energy demands, supply, consumption, and solutions in Taiwan 2050 LEDs plan. The purpose for Taiwan to achieving a vision of “100% renewables” needs a comprehensive strategy; we believe it is definitely a social activity. In initial stage, we recommend inviting stakeholders to participate in evaluation and communication; in long-term, we encourage a brain storm modeling framework to create reasonable solutions. On June 26, 2013, the renewable think tank from Australia and Germany are invited to visit Taiwan and further discuss practical issues with our experts and officials such as “How to achieve 100% renewable scenario in Taiwan?” and seek feasible technology and political strategy in “2050 Taiwan GHGs Reduction Pathway Forum”.
