October 18, 2006
The Executive Yuan has approved a draft bill of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act on Sept. 20, which imposes CO2 reduction quotas on Taiwanese enterprises.
The proposed bill would also establish an emissions quota trading and accounting system, under which companies who voluntarily reduce emissions before passage of the law can credit their reduction quotas for trading or for use in future investment projects.
With the bill, Taiwan joins Switzerland and Japan as the only countries in the world to date which have created a law mandating greenhouse gas reduction.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will set general quotas on greenhouse gas emissions, while quotas for individual industries will be set by governing agencies such as the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
Under the bill, governing agencies may set fines ranging from
NTD 200,000 to
NTD 2,000,000.
Implementation of the bill will take place in several stages, starting with a registration and verification system for CO2 emissions, followed by the determination of emissions quotas, and then a quota trading system.
Emissions quotas and the trading system for companies will be determined by a committee of government agencies formed by the EPA.
The EPA hopes that the final review process for the bill can be expedited to allow for implementation of the law in 2008.
(Economic Daily News, Government Information Office website)
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