Air Quality

As introduced by the Yearbook of the Republic of China:

The Air Pollution Control Act, enacted in 1975 and newly revised in June 2002, empowers the government at various levels to establish air quality standards for different areas across Taiwan and monitoring stations at appropriate sites. Air quality is currently monitored through the Taiwan Area Air Quality Monitoring Network. The network comprises 74 stationary automatic air quality monitoring stations, two mobile monitoring stations, and one air quality assurance laboratory. Next-day air quality forecasts for eight areas of Taiwan are issued daily based on the data collected from this network.

In order to monitor ozone precursors in the metropolitan area, eight photochemical assessable monitoring stations (PAMS) are deployed in the north, central, and south of Taiwan to form three monitoring networks. These newly deployed PAMS's will not only gather valuable monitoring data but can also benefit various ambient activities such as atmospheric science and human health risk assessment research.

Air quality improvement measures include stringent emission standards for industrial plants and motor vehicles (5.9 million cars and 12 million motorcycles in 2002), regular exhaust inspections for motorcycles, the promotion of low-pollution transportation vehicles, strict standards on the composition of petroleum products, increased inspections of construction sites, and road-cleaning. The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) levies an air pollution control (APC) fee on both stationary sources, such as factories and construction sites, and mobile sources, such as motor vehicles. This APC fee covers such pollutants as suspended particulates, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and hydrocarbons.

Since its implementation in 1995, the APC fee levying system has led to marked improvement in Taiwan's air quality, with sulfur dioxide concentration decreasing 46 percent from 7.5 ppb in 1994 to 4.0 ppb in 2001. Taiwan's pollution standard index (PSI) exceeded 100 on only 2.76 percent of the days in 2002, compared to 6.83 percent in 1994. In the heavily polluted Kaohsiung and Pingtung area, the PSI exceeded 100 on 8.13 percent of the days in 2002, compared to 18.4 percent in 1994, after the successful implementation of an air quality improvement project launched in 1997. The EPA expects to lower the average figure for all of Taiwan to 2 percent by 2006 and 1.5 percent by 2011.

In fiscal year 2002, the APC fee system generated US$68 million. These funds are allocated to air pollution control programs, such as enforcing the prevention work of fixed and moving pollution sources, subsidizing and encouraging various pollution sources to improve air pollution, inspecting air pollution sources, conducting global environmental protection affairs related to air pollution, supervising measuring air quality, and promoting and encouraging the use of clean energy resources.