Analysis on energy intensive industries under Taiwan's climate change policy

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This study addresses the planning and implementation of energy, industry, and carbon economy policies concerning the development of the Taiwan's energy intensive industries from perspective of climate change. As a newly industrialized country, Taiwan attaches greater importance to the development of green energy and low-carbon industries, in cooperation with global pressure for carbon reduction due to climate changes, through energy and industrial conferences. Thus, in the past year the Taiwanese government constructed four laws concerning energy and carbon reduction in order to drive the green energy industry; furthermore, it plans to reduce current carbon emission benchmarks. Nevertheless, statistical analysis found that in the last decade, energy intensive industries have presented structural unbalance regarding energy consumption, CO2 emissions, energy intensity, contributions to the GDP, and product value. Industries in the industrial sector have high energy consumption, high carbon emissions, and increase total domestic consumption and carbon emissions, which have disproportionate contributions to industrial added value; nevertheless, the government continues to approve investments for such energy intensive industries, and results in continuous increases in energy consumption and carbon emissions. This contradictory phenomenon indicates that newly industrialized countries rely on a manufacturing economic structure, which is difficult to adjust and violates the trends of a global low-carbon economy. Hence, the government must examine and adjust such unbalanced industrial structures, where such adjustments are executed in a fair and just manner, and encourage the development of high value-added measures for low-carbon manufacturing and service sectors to become equal with competitors in a global economy.