In response to the Kaohsiung-Pingtung Air Pollutants Total Emission Control Plan (Draft) (hereinafter referred to as the Total Emission Control) to be implemented recently, the Industrial Development Bureau of MOEA invited relevant governmental units and major unions and associations for discussion on April 23, 2015. The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) was invited to explain the total air pollutant emission control plan and highlights of amendment to facilitate enterprises recognizing the content of amendment and fully reflects industrial opinions as a reference for EPA.
The industrial unions and associations raised many very specific problems when promoting total emission control, such as inadequate auxiliary support for reduced emission, difficulty in equally reducing 5% of all pollutants. Therefore they stated, there should be other alternative plans, providing enterprises with proper prevention equipment and technological information as well as subsidy, explicitly establishing the principles for reduction effectiveness determination before the implementation of total emission control, etc..
According to EPA, there were 2 key amendments in this draft that need to be watched by enterprises in the Kaohsiung and Pingtung areas. One is to increase the reduction volume assigned in phase 1 of total emission control from 0 to 5%, which means 5% reduction of each pollutant as compared to the benchmark year instead of 5% of total pollutants. It also expands the announced first and second batches of fixed pollution sources to be the subject of reduction. The second one is that the approved annual emission standards will be revised to be the annual emission of any one year in the 7 years previous to the implementation.
The Industrial Development Bureau of MOEA will subsequently assist enterprises for proper actions. The related promotion seminars will be held in preliminary phase to allow enterprises understand the way of total air pollutant emission control implementation. If there is a demand from enterprises for air pollution reduction, the Industrial Development Bureau will also provide analysis of prevention technology trends and cost effect evaluation for new equipments to help enterprises reducing the air pollution.