Environmental groups protest industry-friendly carbon fee regulations

Taipei, July 12 (CNA) Environmental groups staged a protest at a public meeting hosted by the Ministry of Environment on Friday, saying that the government's proposed carbon fee mechanisms excessively favor polluters at the expense of the environment.

Along with an as-yet-undecided carbon fee rate, the regulations will determine how much enterprises will be required to pay for their carbon emissions.

The regulations are scheduled to be announced at the end of August after stakeholder opinions are considered and another public hearing has been held, according to the ministry.

At Friday's meeting, activists from the Environmental Rights Foundation, Taiwan Climate Action Network, Green Citizens' Action Alliance and Citizen of the Earth expressed their opposition to the current draft regulations and some held a banner with the slogan "Low carbon fees favor enterprises, the people instead pay the climate costs!"

The campaigners voiced their opposition to a proposed minimum threshold of 25,000 metric tons of carbon emissions. Enterprises that produce less than that amount would not pay any carbon fees, according to the draft regulations.

They also disapprove of granting lower chargeable emission rates to industries deemed to have high carbon leakage risks, referring to enterprises moving operations overseas to avoid paying carbon fees.

Moreover, environmentalists oppose providing polluters the option of using carbon credits to receive a discount of up to 15 percent on their chargeable emissions (i.e., a 10 percent cap for domestic carbon credits, plus a 5 percent cap for international carbon credits).

These regulations will distort price signals, encourage polluters and slow down Taiwan's transition to carbon neutrality, the groups argued.

Environmental Rights Foundation lawyer Lu Kuan-hui (呂冠輝) asked whether the ministry has estimated how much the discounted carbon fees could impact Taiwan's net-zero ambitions.

"We have a 2025 goal of 10 percent less than the emissions of the baseline year of 2005," Lu said. According to Taiwan's latest National Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory Report, the emissions in 2022 saw only a slight decrease of 1.77 percent since 2005.

Cheng Tai-chin (鄭泰鈞) from local environmental group Citizen of the Earth said that the European Union has a sunset provision to end its carbon leakage risk adjustment mechanism by 2034, "but no such endpoint is set in Taiwan's regulations."

The environment ministry's Climate Change Administration Deputy Director-General Huang Wei-ming (黃偉鳴) responded by saying that there will be continuous revisions to the regulations on how major emitters will be expected to pay but the current measures are mainly designed to meet the 2030 carbon reduction targets.

Huang added that industries that wish to take advantage of discounts by using the proposed carbon leakage risk adjustment mechanism will "first have to propose and implement their emission reduction plans in order to be eligible for the discount, which is actually different from the EU's free allowances."

Chargeable emissions will be calculated from the date when the rate is officially announced, he added.

Minister of Environment Peng Chi-ming (彭啟明) said last week that there will be one or two additional carbon fee rate review committee meetings before the rate is set.