One hundred and one of Taiwan’s biggest companies say they’ll slash their carbon emissions by more than 1.5 million metric tons in the next three years. And almost half of them have committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. That’s under the terms of a sustainability initiative led by E.Sun Bank.
The bank’s chair, Joseph Huang, says this year several new companies have signed on, including Taiwan’s biggest telecoms provider, Chunghwa Telecom.
Taken together, the companies involved in the initiative earned NT$5 trillion (US$170 billion) in revenue last year. That’s almost a quarter of Taiwan’s GDP.
They say they’ll cut 1.57 million tons of carbon by 2025. Taiwan as a whole emitted about 270 million tons of carbon in 2020.
At an event for the initiative on Thursday, President Tsai Ing-wen said the government will reduce emissions using a “large first, small second” approach. That means large polluters will carry more of the burden initially, leaving small and medium-sized enterprises to transition more slowly.
And starting this year, Tsai says, participants in state-backed investment schemes will need to submit emission reduction plans. Tsai says these policies all require close cooperation between the government and industry.