I think the monitoring started in 2011 so it was neither chosen randomly nor to make a point. There just isn’t any available data prior to that year.
I’ve never said it’s not bad. It is really bad, especially Kaohsiung in winter. I’m just saying that it used to be even worse. I’m pretty sure that everyone who’s been here long enough will be able to attest to it.
It kinda is a given. Western Europe just isn’t that industrial any more, and countries like Australia and America are huge. If Taiwan was as vast as Australia is this whole problem would go away. Mind you, coal only accounts for 45% of Taiwan’s energy sources, that number is 75% in Australia. Natural gas is already the second largest energy sources in Taiwan (something like 35%) and it’s expected to be 50% in 2025.
I’m probably coming off as argumentative but I am suspicious of the data provided by cities directly in Taiwan as their incentives are predicated on showing improvement yearly. Would love to find an independent dataset maybe from the LASS network, problem is it is quite new.
Yes if Australia was Taiwans size they would be screwed but again if we are doing comparisons let’s aim to compare against Japan. Tokyo used to have bad air quality thrughout the year until Tokyo’s mayor instituted drastic vehicle emissions regulations in the early 2000s if I recall. That’s almost 20 years ago now. Should we have to wait until 2030 to see significant improvement it looks like it with their carbon powered plan for the 2020s here! From the plan I saw coal use will only go down from today’s usage towards end of 2020s (it will actually peak in 2025).
‘Air quality has really improved, with most major pollutants down significantly. In Taipei, most of the time the air quality is good, but in the south it’s often bad for those who are sensitive, because in the winter the wind blows from north to south, causing all kinds of pollutants to blow to the south and accumulate in Kaohsiung. So even though the situation has improved, many people still feel dissatisfied. But compared to many other countries we are still okay.’
There are three problems I have with his statement.
Air pollution affects everybody not people.who are “sensitive”. There are thousands of peer reviewed research articles on this subject he must be well aware of
Pollution in Kaohsiung is mostly produced in Kaohsiung
He doesn’t state compared to which countries that they are doing okay
If the supercritical upgrades can really bring down pollution per watt from these coal plants then we might not see an increase in air pollution even though coal use for power generation will go up until 2025 at least (another issue is getting environmnetal approval and budget for a new LPG terminal in Taoyuan).
There’s also a possibility nuclear power will be maintained a little longer now.
Taiwan will however see substantial increases in CO2 emissions and that’s a big fail for our global environment.
It is true the East Coast area has less PM 2.5 but still there are only a couple of cities in the East Coast where PM 2.5 is considerably lower all over the year.
