Taiwan is clearly not endowed with rich energy resources, given its limited amounts of coal, natural gas and oil, and its limited capacity for the production of water power; it must therefore rely upon imports from the international market for over 97 per cent of its energy supplies. In a comparison of United Nations and World Bank statistics, and estimations by the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER), we find that Taiwan’s financial burden of imported energy is, per capita, the third largest in the world (behind only Korea and Japan). In 2001, the real per capita financial burden of imported energy had reached NT$10,735 per person in Taiwan (approximately US$306.7 with a base year of 1996). There is no doubt that energy usage was one of the major driving forces in the creation of rapid economic development in Taiwan, as well as the modernization of its people’s living standards.
However, it is also clear that Taiwan has unfortunately placed significant emphasis on economic development and on industrial policies, whilst largely ignoring environmental protection. Therefore, the island’s economic miracle has also been accompanied by considerable degradation of the environment upon which people have traditionally relied for their subsistence. The huge quantity of energy which has been consumed to support the island’s economic development, has simultaneously led to steadily worsening environmental quality (air, soil and water pollution) and further reliance on the importation of energy resources. Energy resources are clearly valuable non-renewable resources which bear very high opportunity costs for Taiwan.
In pursuing sustainable development, an important policy task for administrative officials in Taiwan involves finding ways in which the targets for energy conservation can be reinforced, and energy efficiency can be improved. It seems quite clear that the setting up of a full-scale and regularly based statistical energy efficiency indicator system represents the foundation for estimating the potential market for long-term energy conservation; energy efficiency indicators also provide a policy instrument for reviewing the progress or the impacts of energy efficiency initiatives. Therefore, based upon the fundamental theoretical research on energy efficiency indicators carried out by this research team in 2002, the aim of the current year’s research in this area is to establish a basic field study of industrial energy efficiency indicators so as to assess both the potential market, and the targets, for energy conservation initiatives in Taiwan.
The major research goals for 2003 are as follows.
1. to produce a draft for reasonable energy conservation targets for Taiwan and for its industrial sectors, and in the meantime, to set up an energy efficiency indicator system for review of progress in energy conservation targets.
2. to build up a computerized database and to compile statistical guidelines for energy efficiency indicators.
3. to complete an assessment report on the 2003 energy efficiency review at both aggregate and disaggregate levels.