This Plan includes: planning of air quality control issues, permit management, air pollution fees reviews, fixed pollution source examination and other projects. According to the analytic results of Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS 9.0), emissions from diesel vehicles, electric power industry, vehicle-generated dust, and construction projects are relatively high among various types of PM2.5 emission sources, which are the key current issues in air pollution control. Therefore, the air pollution mitigation strategies such as the reduction in the power generation industry, the elimination of old diesel vehicles, the green traffic management measures, and the tightening of air pollution control in public construction were pushed forward through inter-agency cooperation and the platform of the City Government Air Pollution Working Group. According to the statistics, the cumulative reduction of PM2.5 was 1795.04 metric tons by the end of December 2017. In addition, we assisted the Environmental Protection Bureau in planning Taichung City Deteriorating Air Quality Control Measures and gave guidance to the top 30 largest emitters of gas out of 88 factories in submitting reports on the prevention and control plan as well as cooperating with load shedding and emission reduction when the air quality deteriorated. Among them, the Taichung Power Plant had carried out load shedding 89 times as of January 2018 with reduction of power generation by 861.3 million kWh and PM2.5 by 26.11 metric tons since the implementation of friendly load shedding for environmental protection in November 2015.
In order to speed up air quality improvement, the City Government promulgated the Regulations Regarding Autonomous Control of Bituminous Coal in 2016, and approved the ○○○○ Plant’s bituminous coal deduction of up to 5 million tons by making use of the licensing review extension and changing timing in November 2017 to realize the core spirit of coal deduction essentially implied in the autonomous decree. Further, we continued to handle the permission to recycle the licensed emissions reduced, and recovered a total of 579.17 metric tons of particulate pollutants, 1,752.46 metric tons of sulfur oxides, 5006.11 metric tons of nitrogen oxides and 326.44 metric tons of volatile organic compounds, of which the ○○○○ Plant’s reduction ratio of licensed emissions reached 24%, accounting for the largest reduction rate. There were 94 new pollution controlled targets, while 45 targets’ operations were suspended, and a total of 1,647 targets were being controlled. Although the number of controlled targets was higher than in 2016, the emissions of sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides from the first quarter to the third quarter of 2017 were respectively 11.9% and 9.4% lower than the same period of 2016, mainly because of the pollutant reduction at ○○○○ Plant and the use converted to natural gas implemented gradually in the steel plants reheating furnaces at ○○○○ Company. During the implementation of the Plan, we completed the pollution fees audit from the fourth quarter of 2016 to the third quarter of 2017, computed and pushed payment of 9.2 million and 7516 NTD. In addition, the “Taichung City Emissions of Criteria Pollutants and Hazardous Air Pollutants in Boilers” was announced on June 20, 2017. With the Subsidy Program for the Use Converted to Natural Gas in Reheating Equipment for Enterprises, which was put into effect by the City Government's Economic Development Bureau, we pushed forward the conversion into clean fuel for the use in boilers through dual-track approach including “strengthening control” and “supporting subsidies”, and a number of 126 companies have applied for subsidies so far, of which 48 have completed improvement.
During the plan period, the conformity inspection of fixed pollution sources in 377 cases were completed, 26 of which were in violation of laws and regulations and were accused and sanctioned by the Environmental Protection Bureau. Reasons for non-compliance included operating without operator’s licenses, operating without complying with approved license content and failure to properly collect, treat and dispose of air pollutants; the other 22 were inspected and found to be unqualified and the seizure rate was 12.4%. In response to the problem of odor in the Related Industrial Park, the long-term monitoring and inspection through the infrared thermal imaging cameras found that the ○○ Industrial Corporation Taichung Harbor Plant was suspected of illegal disposal. The Environmental Protection Bureau thus reported it to the Taichung District Prosecutors Office for investigation. On July 21, 2017, a joint investigation was launched by police / prosecutor with environment agency to find on the spot that ○○ Industrial Corporation was using the undeclared emergency pipelines to illegally dispose of class 2 toxic substances such as dimethylformamide (DMF) produced in the manufacturing process. In addition, the under-reporting of pollution fees was found, hence a total of over 10 million NTD back payment should be made according to the accounting calculation, and such case has been transferred to the investigation agency and the investigation is ongoing.
According to the air quality monitoring data, the average concentration of PM2.5 in Taichung City was decreased to 20.2 micrograms per cubic meter in 2017, which was a decrease of 11.4% compared with 2016. The improvement rate was the highest in the nation, and it was only 5 micrograms higher than that of National Ambient Air Quality Standards, thereby showing that the control strategy worked, and the air quality in Taichung continued to get better.
