Air Pollution Policies: Only One Step Taken Over the Past 12 Years? How Many 12 Years

: 27 December 2018; Hits: 3985

Air Pollution Policies: Only One Step Taken Over the Past 12 Years? How Many 12 Years" Do We Have Left

Author / Yi-Ting Liu, Assistant Research Fellow, RSPRC
Translator/Jo-Shih Chiu

1. The Emergence of Air Pollution Issues

In recent years, every time when fall and winter season sets in, it brings along severe air pollution to Taiwan. Discussions and protests on air pollution that happened around Taiwan in early years differ in nature from recent anti-air pollution campaigns in terms of environmental movement. Anti-air pollution movements in early years were mainly the protests against certain pollution caused by individual factory that triggered evident and immediate sensory stimulation towards local residents by whom the protests were set off, whereas recent anti-air pollution movement (the one that introduced the PM_2.5 issue to the public during the protest over Kuokuang petrochemical project) started to be more concerned with "overall air quality" than a "single and specific source of pollution" (Chen & Ho, 2017).

The "anti-air pollution movement" issue first emerged when Prof. Ben-Jei Tsuang of Department of Environmental Engineering, National Chung Hsing University presented his findings on "PM_2.5 Generated by the Operation of Kuokuang Petrochemical Plant and its Impact on Health and Visibility" at the "Expert Meeting on Health Risk regarding Kuokuang Petrochemical Project in Changhua" that took place in June of 2010. Prof. Tsuang's study suggests that in addition to the discharge of toxic chemicals such as dioxins and sulfides, PM_2.5 pollutants can disperse throughout Taiwan. Once Kuokuang Petrochemical Project is lauched, the life expectancy of Taiwanese will shorten by 23 days (Tsuang, 2010). The "Anti-Kuokuang Petrochemical campaign" sparked the health risk issue regarding PM_2.5. In particular, a group of physicians in Chuanghua established the Changhua Medical Alliance for Public Affairs and positively carried out the dissemination of knowledge on air pollution and its threat to the health, which amplified the effects of the issue and urged the government to amend the Air Pollution Control Act, and went further to the extent of pushing Ma Ying-jeou the former president to terminate the Kuokuang Petrochemical Project in 2011. Since then, air pollution issue has drawn increasing concern in Taiwan, meanwhile, "PM_2.5" has been highly thematized in the scope of air pollution and environmental appeals, and became the focus of attention. Therefore, air pollution policy has become one of the priorities of administrative implementations during the last two years of Ma Ying-jeou's presidency (2014 - 2015) and in Tsai Ing-wen's government (2016 - present) as well, while reducing the concentration of PM_2.5has become a major goal of policy on improving air quality in Taiwan.

Health hazards associated with air pollution have become not only in Taiwan but a global public health issue. While WHO identified PM_2.5 as Group 1 carcinogen, it also listed ambient air pollution as carcinogenic and fatal. According to Air Quality Index (AQI), air pollutants include sulfur dioxide (SO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O₃), coarse particulate matter (PM₁₀), fine particulate matter (PM_2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and toxic substances such as benzene in the air, toluene, dioxins and gas containing heavy metal compounds, are all considered hazardous to health.

Public attention and discourse on air pollution was primarily a health risk discourse emerged from one campaign opposing the petrochemical project. Coupled with the initiative posed by environmental protection organizations, the scope of the discourse evolved from environmental protests against "single source of pollution" to the level of overall "air quality", since then the discussion and attention on air pollution issues, as well as public awareness and recognition, have increased and kept growing. For the past 2 years, anti-air pollution demonstrations centered mainly on the citizen's appeal in regard to "Fresh Air" demanding the government to address the air pollution issues with more specific strategies. The widespread health hazards caused by air pollution is so critical to the extent of being considered raising national security concerns, that the government should implement risk governance and actively propose strategies to improve the annual average concentration of air pollutants that has never met the standard. Ever since Tsai Ing-wen took office, the Environmental Protection Administration has made significant progress in addressing air pollution issues. This essay traces the development of air pollution policies to systematically review and summarize the overall air pollution policy and its context.

2. One Small Step Taken Over the Past 12 Years?

In 1975, Taiwan enacted the Air Pollution Control Act to regulate 5 pollutants including coarse particulate matter (PM₁₀), ozone, sulfur oxides and carbon monoxide. With regard to the monitoring of air quality, the government began to set up air quality monitoring stations in 1980 and completed the installation of the network of air quality monitoring stations in 1993. At the time, the air quality monitoring stations of Environmental Protection Administration were in charge of monitoring pollutants such as particulates with a diameter less than or equal to 10 μm (PM₁₀), nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, nitrogen oxide and ozone.

The Environmental Protection Administration started to monitor PM_2.5 in 2005. As for the control of PM_2.5, the Environmental Protection Administration commissioned National Taiwan University College of Public Health to conduct the project "Three-year plan for the research and development of PM_2.5 air quality standards", based on which the Environmental Protection Administration intended to form the control plan in 2011 upon the completion of the project (Chu, 2016). However, because PM_2.5was included in the air quality regulations due to the anti-Kuokuang Petrochemical campaign, the Environmental Protection Administration had to set standards for PM_2.5 concentration ahead of schedule and before the project had been completed. Although Taiwan set to monitor PM_2.5 in 2005, its control would involve a number of industries such as energy, petrochemistry and steel, and have significant impact at energy and economy level. In the absence of the government's policy making, specific regulatory standards and related measures and timetable were lacking. It was not until Ma Ying-jeou the former president had pledged to control PM_2.5 under the pressure of anti-Kuokuang Petrochemical campaign, did Environmental Protection Administration start to set standards for PM_2.5 control. It was under the formulation of the Golden 10-Year Platform, the national-wide "Air Pollutant Volume Management Plan" was therefore included in the platform, i.e. the plan under which PM_2.5 should meet the standard of 15 μg/m³by 2020. The control standards of PM_2.5 was announced on May 4 of 2012, in which the standard annual average concentration was set to be 15 μg/m³, while the daily average was set to be 35 μg/m³. Subsequently, the manual monitoring system was implemented in 2013, followed by the announcement of control plan for fine particulate matter in June of 2014. Due to the aggravation of air pollution, as evidenced by numerous epidemiological reports and citizen's questioning, the Environmental Protection Administration launched the "Routine Meeting for Supervision and Liaison of Air Pollution Reduction Actions" in April of 2015, and put forward the "Clean Air Action Plans" in August of the same year. Shortly thereafter, following the political party rotation, the DPP government released the "Revised Plan" for the KMT version of "Clean Air Action Plans" in 2016, and successively put forward the draft revision of "Emergency Control Regulations on the Serious Deterioration of Air Quality" and implemented the Air Quality Index (AQI) in November and December of the same year. In 2017, the DPP government launched the latest "14+N" air pollution control measures.

Owing to the international trend on air pollution control, PM_2.5 control is a more challenging implementation of policy that requires more governance capacity, that it can be regarded as a leap forward in air quality management. Therefore, this essay uses "the beginning of the monitoring of PM_2.5"as the starting point of the evolution of air pollution control. We are now entering the 12th year of this course of evolution. This essay set out to review the evolution of air pollution control in Taiwan in three phases as stated in Table 1 below. The first phase starts from 2005 when the government began the monitoring of PM_2.5 and ends at "the formulation of air quality standards for PM_2.5" in 2012; the second phase is from 2013 to 2016 when the government put forward the Clean Air Action Plans and the Revised Plan; while the third phases is from 2017 to present, starting from the formulation of 14+N and the amendment of Air Pollution Control Act and its sub-law.

Table 1. Evolution of air pollution control

Governance phases	Years	Monitored	Establishment of concentration standards	Specific control measures for PM_2.5	Policy Implementations
Phase I	2005 to 2011	✔	❌	❌	2005: Monitoring of PM_2.5 2007: Air pollutant emission inventory 7.0 2007: Automatic and continuous monitoring of real-time data of PM_2.5 2009: Control plan for fine particulate matter 2010: Golden 10-Year Plan (approved in 2012)
Phase II	2012 to 2016	✔	✔	❌	2012: PM_2.5 air quality standards 2014: Emission inventory 8.0 for the control plan of PM_2.5 2015: Clean air action plans 2016: Revision of Clean air action plans
Phase III	2017 to present	✔	✔	✔	14+N Air pollution control measures Amendment of Air Pollution Control Act Revisions of regulations regarding fixed and mobile sources of pollution

Source: Table prepared by the author

Table 1 presents mainly the development of air pollution governance in Taiwan, divided using years, monitoring of air quality, establishment of concentration standards, policy implementations, and substantial or mandatory measures. Firstly, with regard to the monitoring of air quality in Taiwan, the government started to set up air quality monitoring stations in 1980, and completed the network in 1993, the installation of automated monitoring stations was basically completed in 2005; while "Air Pollutant Emission Inventory" has gone through 6 revisions since 1992, and in 2008 it first became feasible for regulatory purpose by applying the spatial resolution of 1 square kilometer grid emission. In fact, after the Anti-Kuokuang Petrochemical campaign, many air pollution studies made estimations based on this emission inventory which can be considered the first highly cited and practical emission inventory. The latest version is TEDS9 with estimations conducted based on the emission data collected in 2013. The second phase starts from the establishment of air quality standards for PM_2.5in 2012, aiming to reach the target concentration of average 15 μg/m³by 2020. Although the improvement goal was set, there were no corresponding policies to address the goal over the past 5 years. It was not until this year (2017) that the government put forward the "14+N" air pollution control measures in response to the public's demands and in order to focus more on air pollution issues, and this marked the beginning of the third phase. However, the concentration is expected to reach 18 μg/m³ by 2019, a gap still exists when compared with the target improvement set in 2012 (i.e. to achieve a concentration of 15 μg/m³ by 2020).

As an urgent need to improve the air quality emerges, the Environmental Protection Administration has been planning to amend the Air Pollution Control Act (Environmental Protection Administration, 2017). On the other hand, although the government started to monitor PM_2.5 in 2005, there were no concentration standards and related policies implemented until 2012, when the anti-Kuokuang Petrochemical campaign took place and thus facilitated the establishment of concentration standards. Nevertheless, none of the above had brought about substantial policy targeted specifically to improve the air pollution till 2017, 5 years after the concentration standards for PM_2.5 had been established.

3. The Public's Demands Regarding Air Pollution Issues and the Policy Response

The emergence of air pollution issues and related discussions, along with the maturing of civil society, the development of information technology, the efforts made by civil groups such as environmental protection organizations and Foundation of Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan to reveal the hazards and severity of air pollution, and media exposures, have raised the public's awareness and attention toward the risks associated with air pollution. The essay attempted to sort out the evolution of air pollution issues and related policies from the emergence of the issues, the public's demands put forth in recent anti-air pollution campaigns to the government's response, illustrated by the timeline in Figure 1 below. The timeline starts with the publish of the significant environmental database - Air pollutant emission inventory in 2007, with the upper part showing year by year milestones regarding air pollution issues and the demands presented in anti-air pollution demonstrations; while the lower part shows the air pollution control measures implemented by the Environmental Protection Administration for the comparison with the upper part by time sequence.

air pollution 12years en1

Figure 1. Track timeline of the evolution of air pollution issues and related policies

Source: Figure prepared by the author

With respect to the recent concerns about PM_2.5, the environmental impact assessment for Kuokuang Petrochemical Project was conducted in 2010, then civil groups opposing the project invited President Ma Ying-jeou to participate in their dinner event in 2011 and demanded him commit to the control of PM_2.5. Subsequently, the Environmental Protection Administration announced the "Draft Revision of Air Quality Standards" at the end of the same year, established the PM_2.5 air quality standards in 2012, and implemented the manual monitoring of PM_2.5 and the PM_2.5 index in 2013 and October of 2014 respectively. The air pollution flag was raised in Wun-Fu Elementary School in Kaohsiung for the first time in November of 2013. The documentary "Under the Dome" was banned by the Chinese government in February of 2015 but indirectly drew public attention to the PM_2.5 issue in Taiwan; in June of the same year, as the air pollution issue simmers, environmental protection groups organized jointly the anti-air pollution demonstration "Don't let our children be deprived of the right to see the future"; in August of the same year, the Environmental Protection Administration put forward the "Clean Air Action Plans". At the end of the year, as the impact of air pollution intensified during winter season, environmental protection groups took to the street again, urging the government to positively control and address the air pollution problem.

Following the political party rotation in 2016, the new government proposed a revised plan for the "Clean Air Action Plans" put forward in 2015, the Environmental Protection Administration then announced the draft revision of "Emergency Control Regulations on the Serious Deterioration of Air Quality" and implemented the Air Quality Index (AQI) respectively in November and December of the same year. In February of 2017, another anti-air pollution demonstration took place, Executive Yuan convened "The Follow-Up Meeting on the Planning and Promotion of Air Pollution Control Measures" in March, followed by Environmental Protection Administration's presentation of "Specific Action Plans for Air Pollution Control Measures and Goal" in a meeting in Executive Yuan took place on April 13 of 2017, which signifies the government's determination to control the air pollution. On April 28 of the same year, the Environmental Protection Administration held a public hearing on "14+N Air Pollution Control Strategy Focus" together with the Ministry of Transportation and Communication and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, addressing the public's demands with policy response by setting the goal and timetable for improving air pollution.

By "14+N", the "14" refers to the air pollution control measures to be implemented, while the "N" means available solutions to be provided in response to the public's demands. The total budget of the "Air pollution control measures" will be NTD 21.5 billion, among which the government intends to contribute NTD 36.5 billion, Taiwan Power Company will contribute NTD 10.1 billion, and the rest NTD 168.4 billion will be contributed by private sector within a time span of three years (Chen, 2017). The budget allocated to air pollution policies this time is reflecting the government's unprecedented attention on the issue, when compared with the past. Funds contributed by the government, private sector, and Taiwan Power Company and the 14 air pollution control measures are described in detail as follows (Table 2):

Table 2. 14+N Air Pollution Control Measures and Contributed Funds (Unit: 100 million NTD)

Control measures		Funds contributed by the government		Funds contributed by private sector	Taiwan Power Company (2017 - 2019)
Control measures		Fund Budget	General Budget	Funds contributed by private sector	Taiwan Power Company (2017 - 2019)
Fixed Source of Pollution	1. Power facility regulations	-	-	46.2	101.2
	2. Boiler regulations	4.9	20	90	-
	3. Agricultural waste burning smoke control	2.3	-	1.1	-
	4. Regulations for construction and stockpiling of dusty materials	7.1	-	139.3	-
	5. Catering fume control	2.4	-	7	-
	6. Changing customs and tradition	2.1	-	-	-
	7. River fugitive dust control	3.1	2.7	-	-
Mobile Source of Pollution	8. Replacement of stage 1 and stage 2 diesel cargo trucks	137.5	-	1078~1725	-
	9. Installation of smoke filter on stage 3 diesel vehicles	26	-	68.4	-
	10. Replacement of two-stroke motorbikes	11.5	-	244~390	-
	11. Port area transportation control	-	1.1	0.8	-
	12. Increasing the number of public transport users	-	140.9	5.3	-
	13. Improving transport capacity of rail freight	-	0.1	0.3	-
	14. Promotion of electric vehicles for transporting vegetables and fruits	3.5	-	3.6	-
Total		200.4	164.8	1684~2477	101.2

Source: Environmental Protection Administration (2017c)

Note: "Changing customs and tradition" and "River fugitive dust control" are categorized as non-point source of pollution in the emission inventory, but Environmental Protection Administration categorized the two items as fixed source of pollution in 14+N air pollution control measures.

Besides, in the "Meeting on 14+N Air Pollution Control Strategy Focus", the Environmental Protection Administration provided the respective fund requirements of the 14 subcategories of control measures. The fund requirements are as follows (Environmental Protection Administration, 2017c):

"Power facility regulations": Ministry of Economic Affairs - NTD 10.119 billion for 2019 and NTD 22.156 billion for 2020;
"Boiler regulations": Environmental Protection Administration - NTD 400 million for 2018, Ministry of Economic Affairs - NTD 2.08 billion for 2019;
"Agricultural waste burning smoke control": Environmental Protection Administration - NTD 230 million for 2019;
"Regulations for construction and stockpiling of dusty materials": Environmental Protection Administration - NTD 705 million for 2019;
"Catering fume control": Environmental Protection Administration - NTD 240 million for 2019;
"Changing customs and tradition": Environmental Protection Administration - NTD 210 million for 2019;
"River fugitive dust control": Environmental Protection Administration - NTD 310 million for 2019, Water Resources Agency - NTD 410 million for 2019, Forestry Bureau - NTD 130 million for 2019;
"Replacement of stage 1 and stage 2 diesel cargo trucks": The budget requirement is NTD 13.75 billion for 2017 - 2019, the government will consider the possibility of raising air pollution fee to fund the plan;
"Installation of smoke filter on stage 3 diesel vehicles": Environmental Protection Administration - around NTD 2.6 billion;
"Replacement of two-stroke motorbikes": Environmental Protection Administration - NTD 1.15 billion for 2017 - 2019;
"Port area transportation control": There is no fund requirement at present, government agencies will further develop action plans.
"Increasing the number of public transport users": around NTD 14 billion;
"Improving transport capacity of rail freight": There is no specific budget set aside to fund this plan; the government will increase container traffic according to the control measure;
"Promotion of electric vehicles for transporting vegetables and fruits": Environmental Protection Administration - NTD 346 million for 2017 - 2019.

The essay will further discuss how the policy response focused on the public's demands by looking into several important improvement plans aiming to control the two major sources of pollution: For fixed source of pollution, "Power facility regulations" and "Boiler regulations" will be mainly discussed; as for mobile source of pollution, "Replacement of stage 1 and stage 2 diesel cargo trucks" and "Replacement of two-stroke motorbikes" will be discussed. The public's demand regarding "Power facility regulations" is to reduce the use of coal, forbid the burning of coal and petroleum coke and provide the timetable for coal reduction plans, and the policy response focused on tightening the emission standards of the power industry, decommissioning obsolete and pollution-intensive power generating units, and installing air pollution controlling equipment on natural gas power generating units. As for "Boiler regulations", the public demanded that the emission standards for boiler should be more stringent, and proposed the installation of natural gas pipelines or tanks in each industrial district. The policy response focused on improving the use of commercial and industrial boilers. For about 1,000 commercial boilers, the government will promote the use of clean fuels such as natural gas from 2017 to 2018; while for the 5,000 industrial boilers, the government will work on the integration of resources, reducing the use of boilers, and the installation of natural gas pipelines. For mobile sources of pollution, the public's demands regarding "Replacement of stage 1 and stage 2 diesel cargo trucks" and "Replacement of two-stroke motorbikes" focused on replacing obsolete motor vehicles and large vehicles with heavy emission of exhaust, of which the raise of fines has been announced and this should be accompanied by supporting policies, therefore the policy response is to enforce roadside checks and the notification for vehicle check, to reduce "cuttlefish" vehicles and establish a rebate plan for the replacing of obsolete large diesel vehicles, this serves as an incentive to facilitate the replacement of stage 1 and stage 2 diesel cargo trucks. Meanwhile, the government plans to reduce one million two-stroke motorbikes by 2019, and will put forward a rebate plan for the replacement of two-stroke motorbikes.

On the whole, the demonstration "Don't let our children be deprived of the right to see the future" took place in the first half of 2015 defended the right of breathing fresh air, and the demonstration "Walk for the next generation: Save the Health, Save the Planet, Save the Kids" took place in the second half demanded the government to pay more attention on the governance and improvement of air pollution. It can be observed that by keeping pressing for their pending demands regarding air pollution, the citizens pushed the government to commit to policy makings, showing the effects of public movements on the forming of policies. Executive Yuan and Environmental Protection Administration convened follow-up meetings in March and April of 2017 to present a more specific goal and timetable for improving air pollution. The essay will thereby further look into the evolution of air pollution policies and the content of the improvement goals from 2015 onwards.

4. How Has Air Pollution Policies Evolved?

This section unpacks the goals and evolution of air pollution improvement strategies and examines the policies took effect over the past 2 years by looking into the "Clean Air Action Plans" in 2015, "Revised Plan for Clean Air Action Plans" in 2016, and "Air Pollution Control Measures" put forward on April 13 of 2017. This essay will first give an overview of the goals and expected outcome of the three above-mentioned major improvement timetables in order, then discuss a number of important policy implementations regarding fix source of pollution, mobile source of pollution and other source of pollution.

The enhanced measures in "Clean Air Action Plans" put forward in 2015 focused on the promotion of electric-powered transportation (e.g. two-wheeler and electric bus), diesel vehicles fitted with exhaust filters, and the use of natural gas boilers in hotels; the "Revised Plan for Clean Air Action Plans" implemented in 2016 put an emphasis on the control and elimination of fume and dust, changing the fuel used in boilers, and reforming the customs and tradition such as burning incense and joss paper; while in Executive Yuan meetings held in March and April of 2017, the Environmental Protection Administration unveiled its air pollution improvement and emission reduction strategies against specific sources of pollution, namely fixed, mobile and other sources of pollution, and the expected outcome of each. The air pollution policies therefore become more explicit and is being implemented in practice progressively, farther follow-up and review are still required thouh.

The next section will discuss several critical policies and improvement strategies against the three types of source of pollution: fixed source of pollution, mobile source of pollution, and other source of pollution. There are mainly two improvement measures employed for the "fixed source of pollution". As shown in Figure 2, the scope with regard to "Boiler regulations" in "Clean Air Action Plans" includes only pushing forward with the use of natural gas and other clean energy for hot water supply equipment in hotel industry nationwide, followed by promoting the reduction of coal or heavy oil used in boilers as proposed in the "Revised Plan". In the "Follow-Up Meeting on the Planning and Promotion of Air Pollution Control Measures" held this year, a goal of imposing stricter emission standards for 6,000 small- and medium-sized boilers (including 1,000 commercial boilers and 5,000 industrial boilers) by 2019 was set, which has raised the reduction target for air pollutants. The reduction outcome is expected to be: reduce PM₁₀ for 851 ton/year, reduce PM_2.5 for 175 ton/year, reduce SOx for 4962 ton/year, reduce NOx for 2936 ton/year, and reduce VOC for 7 ton/year.