Taipei, Sept. 16 (CNA) The Ministry of Environment announced amendments to regulations on the quantification and registration of greenhouse gas emissions Thursday, in an effort to better understand the country’s emissions as a basis for their reduction and the future collection of carbon fees in 2025.
The ministry announced on Thursday that in order to improve the quantification and verification of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it has amended related regulations, with the new rules set to come into force next year.
Existing regulations on mandatory carbon emissions reporting require businesses that emit more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year to upload their emissions inventories and verification reports to the government system by the end of August every year.
Currently, there are 500 such companies subject to the regulations.
To accommodate the Climate Change Response Act, which was amended earlier this year and separated the management and verification of emissions quantification, the newly amended regulations provide separate deadlines for quantification/registration and verification, according to the ministry.
The regulations have also been renamed “regulations governing GHG emissions quantification, registration and verification.”
The deadline for quantification report registration will be the end of April, while the verification report has to be submitted within six months of that date or no later than Oct. 31.
The amended regulations also have clearer specifications for emissions calculation methods, and stipulate the need for certified testing institutions to carry out testing.
Climate Change Administration Deputy Director General Huang Wei-ming (黃偉鳴) noted that the new rules also detail information to be included in the quantification report and non-disclosure rules, in answer to the concerns of some companies about their manufacturing processes being revealed.
One new clause prohibits verification being carried out by the same leading verification inspector for six consecutive years.
Huang said one of the main goals in amending the regulations is to get a clearer idea on the amount of carbon emissions created by the 500 “big emitters,” as a base for calculating how much carbon fees are to be collected starting in 2025.
The rate of carbon fees is currently still under discussion.
The amended regulations also stipulate penalties for those who fail to take remedial action after being notified of their failure to meet the deadlines for quantification result registration and verification report uploading. Other issues include a failure to keep relevant reports, or there being a discrepancy of more than five percent between the amount detailed in the quantification report and the result of an authority inspection.
(By Chang Hsiung-feng and Alison Hsiao) Editem/AW
