Ministry of Economic Affairs: Energy-saving upgrades also cut carbon, and industry profits multiply

To promote energy saving and carbon reduction in industry, the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (referred to as the Industrial Bureau) operates the Manufacturing Energy Saving and Carbon Reduction Service Team (referred to as the Service Team), assisting factories with energy diagnostics for equipment or systems, assessment of energy-saving and carbon-reduction potential, and implementation of improvement plans such as system efficiency improvements, equipment replacement, heat recovery and utilization, and fuel substitution. Under the active promotion of the Industrial Bureau, from 98-104 (2009-2015) it cumulatively provided guidance to more than 2,800 factories and offered about 9,500 improvement plans. After the improvements, the factories can save 533,000 kiloliters of oil equivalent per year, save 1.274 billion kWh of electricity, save NT$8.55 billion in energy expenditure, and reduce carbon by 1.637 million metric tons CO2e.

In addition to promoting technical guidance, the Industrial Bureau continues to establish local reduction methodologies. At present, 14 have been reviewed and approved and announced by the Environmental Protection Administration of the Executive Yuan, helping industry invest in greenhouse gas offset work, and seeking to have operators' energy-saving and carbon-reduction improvement results verified as carbon credit quotas for use in future carbon offset or trading.

Recently, information and communications technology (ICT) has developed rapidly. To enhance industry's ability to grasp electricity-use information in real time and pursue the rationality of energy use, in 104 (2015) the Service Team further combined ICT technology to further improve industrial energy saving and energy management efficiency. Through factory energy data analysis and on-site surveys by expert consultants, it identifies major energy-consuming equipment and gives priority to introducing digital electricity meters, cloud technology, and data analysis tools, etc., building a smart energy-saving monitoring system to create tailor-made smart energy-saving solutions.

The Industrial Bureau stated that among many successful cases, breakthrough progress in energy-saving and carbon-reduction results has also been shown. It looks forward to more factories actively following suit, contributing together to a sustainable Taiwan, China, and meeting the challenges of the global carbon-reduction trend.