Green Steps By The New Administration

The government's own Taiwan Journal reported today that:

Taiwan's new administration announced it had begun introducing guidelines for government departments and agencies to save energy and reduce carbon emissions, which are considered one of the major causes of global climate change.

[On] May 22, Presidential Office high-level officials began using smaller cars instead of limousines, reserving the larger vehicles for visiting foreign dignitaries.

Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo has instructed the ministry to use a video conferencing system, so that officials in remote areas do not have to travel to Taipei for meetings. In addition, the MOTC plans to install technology that is able to adjust settings on air conditioning systems based on a room's humidity and temperature. It was estimated that such a system would reduce energy consumption by up to 30 percent.

All moves in the right direction, for sure, but the government also needs to pump money into MRT schemes instead of road-building programs, and tackle the massive CO2 emissions of certain private enterprises, such as the Formosa Plastics Group.

The ideas are right but the goals could be more ambitious:

[Yeh said] employees were also being encouraged to use public transportation at least once a month.

Once a month? Why not twice a week?

Are Taxis An Endangered Species?

The opening of Kaohsiung's MRT is reportedly cutting into taxi drivers' earnings. And in Taipei, a city councilor wants the number of taxis reduced because they're so often cruising the streets empty. Some say more taxis should convert from gasoline to LPG or a dual gasoline-LPG system.

Personally, I hope taxis remain plentiful and inexpensive. I think it's better for people to take trains and buses from one city to another, and then a taxi from the station to their final destination, rather than drive their own vehicle the whole way.

CO2 Estimates on Gasoline Receipts

Right after I discovered CO2 estimates on my utility bills... I bought NT$100 worth of 92-octane (3.33 liters, to be precise). The standard receipt mentions, at the very bottom, that the gas I bought will produce 7kg of carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately, the print is so small and so faint that I might never have noticed this if my wife hadn't pointed it out to me.

ADDED MARCH 15: Looking at receipts from various gas stations, it seems only those run by CPC Taiwan (the state-run oil refiner/distributor) do this.

Are People Driving Less?

On March 1, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported that, "oil sales have declined in Taiwan over the past year as more people are using public transportation instead of private vehicles."

Anecdotal evidence suggests this might be true. When I took my car to be serviced a few months back, I was told by a worker at the garage that business there wasn't good, because people are using their cars less, and so the vehicles need servicing less frequently.

People in Taipei and Kaohsiung (which has a new metro system) may well be using public transportation more often than before. Elsewhere, I suspect they're riding scooters rather than driving cars. I doubt any significant number of people have given up gasoline in favor of bicycles...

Anyway, the nitty gritty of the CNA report: According to the central government's Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), gasoline and diesel sales totaled 13.85 million kiloliters in 2007, down 2.2 percent from the previous year. For January 2008, gasoline and diesel sales decreased 7 percent year-on-year to 1.16 million kiloliters, with gasoline sales dropping 7.9 percent to 819,000 kiloliters and diesel sales losing 4.6 percent to stand at 344,000 kiloliters. As of the end of January 2008, there were 2,606 filling stations around Taiwan, 27 more than 12 months earlier.

DGBAS officials said passenger traffic on Taipei's metro system increased 7.4 percent year-on-year to 36 million people for January 2008, while that of the high-speed railway system rose 68.6 percent year-on-year to two million. During the same month, the number of "small" cars traveling on freeways dropped 1.3 percent year-on-year to 38 million.

By "small" cars I'm assuming they mean private passenger cars. I haven't been able to find the original Chinese article to check this.

There's a related article in the China Post (a Taiwan-based English-language newspaper) here.

In Taiwan, car sales have been falling for two straight years, a fact which many people attribute to a bad economy. In Japan, however, domestic auto sales fell to a 35-year-low in 2007.