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 10.0), 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 Taichung Air Quality Improvement Committee. In addition, we assisted the Environmental Protection Bureau in executing 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 889 times till December 31th 2019 with reduction of power generation by 10.186 million kWh and PM2.5 by 308.64 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 Taichung Power 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 397.07 metric tons of particulate pollutants, 342.98 metric tons of sulfur oxides, 508.09 metric tons of nitrogen oxides and 220.74 metric tons of volatile organic compounds. There were 79 new pollution controlled targets, while 32 targets’ operations were suspended, and a total of 2,066 targets were being controlled. During the implementation of the Plan, we completed the pollution fees audit from the fourth quarter of 2018 to the second quarter of 2019, computed and pushed payment of 369.81 million and 5,829 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 199 companies have applied for subsidies so far, of which 178 have completed improvement.
During the plan period, the conformity inspection of fixed pollution sources in 692 cases were completed, 59 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. With respect to the inspection of testing, 87 sample tests have been completed as of now, two failed to meet the emission standards.
