Figure 1 — the ranking of net imports of coal among countries in 2014
Resource: IEA（2016）
Coal is a traditional fuel, but so far a globe-wide usage still can be observed. According to the IEA (2016) statistics, the global coal production used as energy purpose in 2014 was 2.7 times to it was in 1973, accounting for 29% of the world's total energy supply, which is only second to oil (31%); coal also accounts for a high proportion in energy generation. While the world's largest coal production is in China which accounts for 48% of total global production, the second goes to the United States which is at 12%, then is Australia, Indonesia and India; these five countries account for 80% of the global coal production.
In terms of coal imports, China, India, Japan and South Korea are the largest net importers countries in the world. It is worth noting that Taiwan ranks the fifth (Figure 1). The main usage of imported coal is power generation. In 2016, Taiwan's coal-fired power generation (including CHP) accounted for about 46% of the total power generation; coal is the most important source of electricity supply for Taiwan. According to the "Medium-Term Coal Market Report" published by the IEA in 2016, it expects Taiwan's coal imports to grow by 2.4% per year over the next five years, higher than that of South Korea and Japan; Taiwan shows a high dependency on coal.
Figure 2 — the 2016 international energy efficiency scorecard
Resource: The 2016 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard
Figure 3 — the comparison of energy efficiency between Taiwan and the highest scoring countries
Resource: The 2016 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard
In 2016, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) announced the International Energy Efficiency Scorecard, Taiwan was included for the first time in the twenty-two countries league and ranked the thirteenth (Figure 2), which came after the neighbour Asian countries. Taiwan’s performance is as follow: national overall energy conservation (13 points), building energy efficiency (13 points), industry sector (16 points), transportation sector (9 points). Figure 3 is the comparison between Taiwan and the world's highest scores, and it is worth pointing out that the country scoring the highest in national overall energy conservation (21 points), building energy efficiency (19.5 points), industry sector (21 points) is Germany and in the transportation sector, it goes to India, Italy, and Japan.
Among all sectors, Taiwan’s industry sector scores the highest in the policy of energy efficiency, and transportation sector scores the lowest; ACEEE pointed out that Taiwan's current fuel efficiency standards is only equal to the half of the best practice and, in building energy efficiency, a special proposal should be developed to create an efficiency marking system for buildings and an information disclosure system of energy consumption. The above shows Taiwan in various sectors of energy efficiency still has room for improvement.
