The Pingtung Low Carbon and Sustainable Home project aims to bring Pingtung County towards a low-carbon county. Through the project, our team assisted the townships and communities in participating in the Low-Carbon Sustainable Home Certification of Environmental Protection Agency. The county can follow the work of its own development and goals, while responding to the central policy and improving the effect of low-carbon sustainable certification in Pingtung County.
The implementation of this project includes technical consulting and counseling, administrative assistance for the coordination of work across bureaus, and information integration. The implementation period of this plan is 10 months, from February 11, 2022, to December 10, 2022. The summary of the implementation of the project is described as follows:
1. Maintaining the operation of “low-carbon and sustainable homes promotion office”
The list of the technical review team of the Southern part for 2022 was sumitted to Tainan City on February 16. Pingtung County had 4 members in the resources recycling aspect.
This project joined the meeting held by Southern part and shared the current implemetation this year and follow-up promotion projects on April 22. Our team held a technical and information counseling meeting in Wayao Villiage, Shinyuan township, joined by 5 cities of Southern part and relevan staffs of Environmental Protection Agency and 4 members of committee.
2. Promoting the implementation plan of greenhouse gas control in Pingtung County
This project held the first meeting of low-carbon homeland and sustainable promotion committee on April 1. According to the result of the meeting, this project cooperated with “the promotion project of climate change and international affairs of envrionmental protection in 2021” to hold an across bureaus workshop on May 31. This workshop was mainly aimed at eduction training and integrating the data of greenhouse gas control and reduction, including 45 stretagies and 82 measures as the second phrase of greenhouse gas control plan (draft) submitted to Executive Yuan. This project held the second meeting of low-carbon homeland and sustainable promotion committee on November 11 to disscuss about the goal of net-zero and green lifestyle .
3. Executing the project of low-carbon sustainable homes
The goal of this year is to assist 10 villages in successfully applying and 5 villages has got the bronze-level certifications. Until October, 2022, 17 villages have successfully applied for certifications. Among them, 7 villages got bronze-level and 1 township got silver-level certification. Apart from the amout of certifications mentioned by the contract, this project also followed the short-term, mid-term, and long-term goal. 17 villages have applied successfully in 2022 and participation rate is 100% (50% of townships in Pingtung County), which has reached the short-term goal. Pingtung County with 33 townships is only fewer than Kaohsiung City (38 townships) and Tainan City (37 townships), which is County with the third most townships. Pingtung County has counseled villages to get bronze-level certification within 30 townships and the counseling rate is 90%, which is the highest among the 3 cities.
This project has confirmed the on-site survey list of 10 villages with the Environmental Protection Agency on February 10. Neipu township Dongpian village was audited in March and other 9 villages were audited on September14, September 22, and October 3. All the audited villages were in good conditions with nice surroundings and well-maintained equipment. Only the appliances which applied for bronze-level certification were all removed due to land resumptionin in Jiuru township Jiuming village. Consequently, the bronze-level certification of Jiuming village was withdrown by Environmental Protection Agency after disscussing with the village.
4. Promoting low-carbon activities based on local features and green building for cooling down
A total of 8 subsidized communities in 2010 were tracked this year. 3 on-site surveys were conducted on September 14, September 22 and October 3. A total of 8 communities and 10 items were audited. Most of them were well maintained, but the plants on the walls of the communities were dry due to climate change, and some farms were fallow. The community will take cutting and recultivate when the weather turns cooler to maintain greening and carbon reduction benefits.
This project counseled 6 communities to promote low-carbon activities based on local features and green building for cooling down, including 2 improvements of indoor lighting, 1 solar street lamp controlled by solar energy, 1 landscaping (including hedgerows) and 2 hedges, shed etc., which got 9 points for the evaluation of green building projects (the full score of the evaluation score is 6 points).
5. Enhancing Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
Our team went to Laiyi township and Checheng township Sheliao village to have a workshop for community-based adaptation to climate change on July 20 and October 2. Professor Chen from Disaster Prevention Center of Pingtung University of Science and Technology gave a lesson to climate change and adaptation strategies. Professor Chen and participatents discussed about the existing resources in communities and realized disasters. Participants were put into groups to find out the adaptation strategies responding to current situations.
After the workshop, our team discussded with disaster precention center about disaster potential of Chechong township. First, solar street lights and monitoring systems were set on the embankment of "Sheliao village" next to the estuary of Checheng township. Second, a real-time monitoring system was set in "Xinjie village" at the intersection of Baoli River and Xinjie Drain to reduce the disaster risk of the village, which was completed in early December.
6. The promotion of low-carbon sustainable homes
We held observation and learning activities for communities and enterprises on September 16 and October 27. The topics of first activity were renewable energy and environmental protection. The topic of second activity were resources recycling, sustainable management and local creativity. The villiages with less bronze-level certifications were invited to the activeities. Our team increased the the williness of particapation and the ability of community creativity by sharing the experience of spotlight villages and the results of community creativity. There are 34 villages that would like to apply for low-carbon certification.
The low-carbon homeland certification briefing session were held on September 25 and October 19. The first session was held at Linhousilin, and the second session was held at Yongan village to make local residents understand the Environmental Protection Agency promotion of the low-carbon sustainable homeland and the benefits of applying certification in the future by sharing the results of actual subsidy. A total of 29 villages in the two sessions are willing to upgrade the village certification, which will be the priority for counseling next year.
Our team regularly updated and maintained the webpage of the Pingtung County Low-Carbon Sustainable Action during the period of this project, including the achievements of promoting low-carbon sustainable homes and information of various environmental protection activities. Until the end of the project, 75 relevent news of low-carbon sustainable actions and information about 2 sessions of low-carbon sustainable homes have been published. In addition, after Chunri township got the silver-level certification of low-carbon sustainable homes, our team invited citizen news, i-media, Watchinese, and Epoch Times were invited to publish online media news on September 5.
7. Administrative cooperation
This project assisted Pingtung County to submit the 25 indicators for environmental protection and sustainable governance evaluation reports and fill in the implementation results of the first half of 2022 on the low-carbon sustainable home website before June 30, and integrate the local Self-evaluation form of environmental protection agencies responding to climate change in 2022 (as Attachment 2).
Our team assisted in helding the First Workshop of "Pingtung County Greenhouse Gas Control and Sustainable Development " on May 31. We went to Millennium Park in Pingtung County on March 26 and Dolphin Bay in Fangshan township on May 28 to hold promotion activities of sustainable development and held RE100 celebration for Pingtung County with the Environmental Protection Bureau on August 9.
