One of the key issues obstructing Taiwan’s transformation toward a net-zero carbon society are the governance deficiencies inherent in the society. On the one hand, the government's inefficient implementation of its carbon reduction policy is a primary bottleneck for the transformation. On the other hand, actors deriving benefits from Taiwan’s high-carbon production regime, such as the steel, cement, petrochemical, and transportation industries, have also mobilized politically to resist the transformation. There is however demand for innovative governance to overcome these challenges. This subproject will employ four inter-related approaches to pursue the goals of a net-zero carbon emission society in Taiwan: first, a comprehensive assessment of the governance deficiencies will be conducted; second, governance instruments to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in Taiwan will be reviewed to identify the gaps; third, governance indicators for the establishment of a net-zero carbon emission society will be developed; and fourth, an analysis of the communication practices will be conducted. In addition, this subproject will use the four aforementioned approaches to evaluate four important policy packages: the administration structure package, the market-based package, the regulatory package, and the communication package. Because the communication package is crucial for the policy implementation toward net-zero emissions, we will analyze how communication practices can be enhanced to improve governance toward a net-zero carbon emission society.
Research summary
German energy transformation in recent years gets the attention of the world. Germany experience to the world is interested in the use of renewable energy to the highest proportion of Denmark, Norway, New Zealand and other countries that are rich in natural resources, low energy consumption of heavy industry in the country; Germany as the world heavy industry, but in 2014 Germany's renewable energy production is expected to account for 25.8% of the total generating capacity, will be the first time to become the largest pillar of German power supply. In 2014, Germany's solar power generation accounted for about 5.8% of total electricity generation. Other renewable energy, wind power generation accounted for about 8.6% of total electricity generation, biomass power generation accounted for about 8%, and hydroelectric power accounted for about 3.4%. It is generally believed that renewable energy to cope with peak load is its weakness, but Germany through the design and management of excellent power grid, the regulation of national power generation system results, Germany in the local time on May 11, 2014 PM 12:00 to 1:00, renewable energy total contribution to 43.54GW, accounting for 74%, nearly three quarters. In other words, renewable energy in some specific time, has been able to cope with such a heavy industry in Germany, the peak load.
Legal System and Social Governance of Electricity Liberalization
Current policy on electricity liberalization market is still only electricity generation market, so existing information on the amount of carbon emissions only in electricity generation sector, future comprehensive implementation of electricity liberalization, power transmission sector can be independent from existing state business , and even further development to sale of electricity sector competition, so in the future can be expected under power separation business, how to master cumulative transport and distribution sector carbon emissions data, energy conservation and carbon reduction thinking and strategy into electricity liberalization planning considerations, and further reflected in the amendment of electricity law, that is an important issue on power policy.
In recent years, Taiwan's air pollution issues have been constantly fermented and warming, causing broad attention and public opinions from social and civic groups. However, the problem of air pollution is not only related to conflict between environmental protection and economic development, but also related to the health risks of our people, and even more, related to national governance under environmental justice risk distribution problem. It can be found that air pollution of human society, in fact, presents a typical risk of social characteristics, because "air and people" has close relationship, the most direct impact is physical life problem. Therefore, environmental pollution control subject of air pollution, in fact, dangerously tests of government's risk management model, if taking traditional thinking to deal with environment policies in the past, delivers a single type administrative organs of air pollution control policies, it may make government affected people conflict between distrust and protest. Therefore, the issues need to be coordinated across different government departments and cross-domain governance in order to solve environmental problems under air pollution, health hazards and environmental education and other issues.
The establishment of database is the cornerstone of all research projects. This study aims at the construction of basic energy transformation database, which is guided by critical, problem-oriented, knowledge-oriented, and the way of daily life. For a long time, many researchers in Taiwan have put forward relevant data to explore our energy policy, energy industry development and industrial energy consumption and other issues, and official units and state-owned enterprises such as the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Taiwan Electric Power Company are also constantly producing relevant data as the basis for discussion. However, academic data are still lacking in comparison with each other and discussion, and scattered in a variety of academic papers; on the other hand, although official data as more benchmarking potential, but in view of our official units data often failed to publish calculation process together, so application is also vulnerable to question.
In the case of critics, Center intends to incorporate existing research data, domestic and foreign research reports and current relevant energy development information, through review, comparison and preliminary analysis; on one hand integrates into a database and proceeds long-term tracking, on the other hand also opens up more for future enough to explore issues. Through long-term database construction, on one hand can collect at home and abroad long-term energy use and transformation trend, on the other hand, as future promotion basis of research and transformation, proposed energy-related issues can be provided for verification and discussion basic platform.
Over past 20 years, although Taiwan government, with the requirements of International Green Convention, and gradually adjusts sustainable economic and industrial policy, in real industry expansion is continuous development and planning of high energy consumption and high carbon biochemical industry, and at different stages Triggering major social struggles. And even in facing of international carbon reduction and domestic environmental movement double pressure, but still cannot stop emerging industrialized countries often to expand energy-intensive industries, in particular, can be made into a variety of people's livelihood petrochemical industry as the main means of rapid economic expansion. Year-round comparison of petrochemical industry, energy-intensive industries, industrial sector energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, energy intensity and GDP contribution, we can see, nearly 10 years of petrochemical industry, energy consumption and emissions accounted for the proportion of country increased, and drove country's growth; however, the proportion of its contribution to GDP has not increased, but has been maintained at a low flat level. In other words, it shows that most of the petrochemical industry has remained in the low-value-added products of energy consumption for more than a decade and has not been actively transitioned. Taiwan, which is highly dependent on long-term energy, has the problem of structural change of Taiwan's industrial transformation, in addition to the systematic cause of high energy consumption and high-emission carbon in the country, which has not changed for a long time.