Citizen Participation in Taiwan Energy Conservation Policies

• Main Authors: YANG, JIN-CHUEH, 楊錦雀
• Other Authors: CHANG, SHIH-YING
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48928010700657175716

碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 公共管理與社區發展研究所碩士在職專班 === 90 === The nature is a miracle that is endowed with varieties of energy resources. Human being works a miracle to create this wonderful world by using the endowed energy resources. Thus, the importance of energy is beyond question. In recent years, protests against the environmental pollution are increasingly occurred year by year. People in Taiwan begin to concern about energy and environmental issues. The economic growth is no longer the only major concern of people. The bottom-up forming process of requirements has brought up an impact on the top-down decision making process of the bureaucratic system. Nevertheless, energy-related problems have increasingly become serious for its complication and occurrence frequency. Although the government worked hard to solve out the problems but they can never catch up the pace of the new problems coming up. Therefore, “citizen participation” in energy policies is important and necessary. The relation between government and people is very close, and is bundled with the same destiny. In May, 1998, the government of the Republic of China held the National Energy Conference inviting representatives from industries, official agencies, academic institutes, and private associations to discuss the carbon dioxide emission problems and their resolutions and to promote a permanent development in energy, economic, and environmental regards. Promotion of energy conservation is an important and no-regret policy. To sustain energy supply and economic development, the government puts a first priority in promoting energy conservation and rationalization of energy use. The Energy Commission, Ministry of Economic Affairs is the main institution administering energy business. It is in charge of the formulation and enforcement of the energy policy and the relative laws. Therefore, my study will focus on a citizen participant energy conservation policy using Taiwan situation as a case study and based on the core concept of citizen participation. Citizen participation will be the basic theory and implemental strategy of the formation of energy conservation policy in Taiwan. In this study I found that the history of citizen participation theory development is still short. Although many people still remain conservative or suspicious attitude on the citizen participation, the citizen participation is an essential part to public policy and it will become more important with the progress of democratization. Especially, the energy conservation policy is closely related to the people, therefore it has a positive meaning in theory or practice in association with citizen participation. From all the above, the citizen participation in energy conservation policy can be started from the mind and demonstrated in four areas: The general public participate in: 1. the policy initiation and project management in governmental agencies, 2. the introduction of not-for-profit organizations, 3. the education plans and the teaching programs in school, 4. the enforcement of the overall community construction. In the process of participation, we will emphasize the aspects of “conservation, efficiency, ecological consideration, human nature caring, partnership, learning by doing, and the sharing of resources,” in order that through the guidance from government agencies and not-for-profit organizations, we can link school, family, and community together and formulate a three-in-one energy conservation education system. Through this system, a citizen participant conservation policy can be soundly formed and implemented and eventually result in a ecologically-green homeland.