Isramart :Taiwan drops in global ranking on carbon dioxide reduction performance

Isramart news:
Taiwan ranked the 47th among 57 countries with the world's largest carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the latest climate change performance index, dropping from its previous ranking of 32nd place, according to the index for 2010 released on Monday.

The German non-governmental organization, Germanwatch, presented the "Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2010" together with the Climate Action Network Europe (CAN-Europe) - a union of over 100 European organizations advocating environmental protection - in Germany and at the United Nations climate conference taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The CCPI, published annually by Germanwatch and CAN-Europe, compares the climate protection performance of 57 industrialized countries and emerging economies.

The 57 countries and economies together account for more than 90 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions. The CCPI contains three partial ratings, including the evaluation of emissions trends, that of a country's current emissions level, and that of a country's national and international climate policies.

Taiwan was not evaluated as part of the system until 2008, when it was ranked 32nd place among 57 countries in the CCPI for 2009 with 51.5 points, a performance better than its Asian neighbors of Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China. But in the CCPI for 2010, Taiwan only got 47.5 points, which pushed it down to the "poor" category. According to the 2010 index, Taiwan's performance in carbon reduction was seen to be better than only Malaysia and China in Asia, while lagging behind India, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

In separate ratings, Taiwan fell in ranking to behind the 40th place in all the evaluation of carbon emissions of power departments, the CO2 emission volume of every unit of preliminary energy sources like coal and crude oil, and the per-capita consumption of the preliminary energy sources.

Taiwan only received a good score with its climate policies, and was seen as having improved in the CO2 emissions of road transportation, as well as those of the manufacturing and construction sectors.

Germanwatch's Jan Burck, one of the CCPI report authors, told the CNA that industrial and developing countries around the world should equally share the obligation to cut carbon emissions. The per-capita carbon emission volume should be the same among the countries by 2050, Burck said.

Speaking of Taiwan's ranking, the expert who has helped develop the CCPI methodology, said Taiwan fell behind in the climate change performance because it has experienced significant growth in carbon emission volume per capita since 1990. In the latest CCPI index, Brazil, Sweden, Britain and Germany all recorded the best performance, while China and the U.S. placed in the "very poor" category along with Australia and Canada.