Taiwan 'poor' on climate

Taiwan was ranked 47th and received 47.5 points in the Climate Change Performance Index 2010 (CCPI), lagging behind India, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Singapore and South Korea in Asia while fared only better than China and Malaysia.

The CCPI, an annual index compiled by non-governmental think tank Germanwatch and European environment group alliance Climate Action Network (CAN), compares the climate protection performance of 57 industrialized countries and emerging economies which together account for more than 90 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions.

It was only the second year Taiwan was included in the CCPI. The island was ranked 32nd place among 57 countries in last year's index. With 51.5 points, Taiwan performed better than its Asian neighbors of Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China.

While noting that Taiwan's CO2 emission volume posted negative growth for the first time in 2008, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) conceded yesterday that the decline in Taiwan CCPI ranking shows that there is still room for improvement.

EPA Minister Shen Shu-hung said he was surprised at Taiwan's CCPI drop despite the island's improvement in both energy intensity and emission intensity (CO2 emission by ratio of GDP). The volume of Taiwan's carbon dioxide emissions in 2008 was 4.4 percent lower than the previous year, and the per capita emissions were 4 percent lower, Shen said.

He said that the result indicated that other countries have advanced even faster than Taiwan and the island needs to work harder to push its ranking upward.

The CCPI evaluates countries in three ways including the evaluation of emissions trends, a country's current emissions level, and a country's national and international climate policies.

Taiwan was ranked to behind the 40th place in all the evaluation of carbon emissions of power departments, the CO2 emission volume of every unit of preliminary energy sources.

like coal and crude oil, and the per-capita consumption of the preliminary energy sources.

Taiwan performed better with its climate policies, and was seen as having improved in the CO2 emissions of road transportation, as well as those of the manufacturing and construction sectors. The government passed the Renewable Energy Development Act on June and aimed to increase Taiwan's renewable energy generation capacity by 6.5 million kilowatts to 10 million kilowatts within 20 years.

Asked by the CNA on Taiwan's ranking, Germanwatch's Jan Burck, one of the CCPI 2010 report authors and one of architects of the CCPI methodology, said that the Taiwan fell behind because it has experienced significant growth in carbon emission volume per capita since 1990.

According to Burck, countries are ranked against one another as well as against the criteria of keeping temperature rise below the dangerous level of two degrees. Since no country is thus far from adequately on the path toward halting dangerous climate change, the three top spots in the rankings are empty once again this year.

The Germanwatch did not put any country in the positions one to three in the CCPI ranking in 2009 and 2010 because the think tank deemed that no country is doing enough to prevent climate change. Taiwan was actually ranked 44th place this year and 27th last year if only prepared to other countries.

In the latest CCPI index, Brazil, Sweden, Britain and Germany all recorded the best performance, while China and the United States placed in the “very poor” category along with Australia and Canada.

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