Particulate pollutants emitted from diesel vehicles are one of the major causes of air quality deterioration in urban areas, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of World Health Organization (WHO) has classified particulate pollutants emitted from diesel engines as a definitive carcinogenic factor. Based on statistics from the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) of the Executive Yuan, the impact of various domestic pollution sources on PM2.5 concentration shows that mobile sources account for 30~37% of total PM2.5, while among the various subdivided sources, heavy-duty diesel vehicles account for the highest 11.2~16.8% of the total. The statistics from the Ministry of Communications reveals that the domestic vehicles are generally old, 50% of which have exceeded 10 years old to cause a significant extent of pollution. To effectively improve the pollution caused by old heavy-duty diesel vehicles, besides setting up air quality maintenance areas and strengthening inspections and restrictions on old heavy-duty diesel vehicles, EPA has promulgated the “Subsidy Measures to Eliminate Old Heavy-duty Diesel Vehicles” on August 16, 2017; and “Subsidy Measures for Installing Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) on Heavy-duty Diesel Vehicles” on August 8 as to increase people’s willingness to eliminate old heavy-duty diesel vehicles and install DPF on the three-phase heavy-duty diesel vehicles. EPA has also simultaneously conducted subsidy advocacy briefings and interviewed the potential vehicle owners to allow them to understand the government’s relevant mobile pollution source control policies and subsidy measures, and help them to clarify their doubts and dilemmas.

Air pollution、mobile pollution sources、diesel vehicle replacement subsidies