Open Journal of Energy Efficiency
Announcement from Editorial Board
The article henceforth has been retracted based on the investigation on the complaints
received against it.
Title: Green Transport Infrastructure of Taiwan
Author: Shyi-Min Lu, Ching Lu, Yu-Shun Huang
The first author Mr. Shyi-Mi n Lu has published the article without Mr. Yu-Shun Huang’s
authorization. In addition, a large part of the article is judged to be plagiar ized from Mr.
Yu-Shun Huang's M.S. thesis.
The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and treats all unethical
behaviors such as plagiarism seriously. Hence the article, which is published in OJEE
Vol.2 No.1, 16-21, 2013, has been removed from this site.
OJEE Editorial Board
November 25, 2013

Open Journal of Energy Efficiency, 2013, 2, 16-21
doi:10.4236/ojee.2013.21003 Published Online March 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojee)
Gr een Transport Infrastructur e of Ta iwan
Shyi-Min Lu1*, Ching Lu2, Yu-Shun Huang3
1Energy Research Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
2Department of Internal Medicine, Hsin-Chu Branch Hospital, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan
3Institute of Applied Mechanics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Received January 12, 2013; revised February 11, 2013; accepted March 5, 2013
ABSTRACT
Transport is the lifeblood of a nation’s economy. Since the fossil fuels are being gradually depleted and the global
warming phenomena are more and more serious, this article is to construct a low-carbon transport infrastructure for
Taiwan by the implementation of energy-saving measures. First of all, via data collection and analysis, we found that
the small passenger cars and the large trucks are the largest energy users in the transport sector, due to their high energy
intensities and large transport volumes. Therefore, their energy-conserving potentials are the focuses of this study.
According to “Top-Down” methodology, the most effective and economical energy-saving strategies for Taiwan’s
transport sector are the significant adoptions of rail transport and electrification mode. Whereby, under a maximal
energy-saving scenario, comprising of delicate shift of transport volumes, the energy saving potential in the land
transport sector of Taiwan is 4914 MLOE (million liters of oil equivalent), which is equivalent to greenhouse gas
reduction of 10.56 Mt-CO2e approximately with a scale of 45.3% or crediting for 4.1% reduction of national GHG
emissions. Finally, we suggest the green transport infrastructure of Taiwan should be mainly comprised of rail transport,
electric motorcycles, MRT (Mass Rapid Transit), and EV (Electric Vehicles).
Keywords: Land Transport Sector; Low-Carbon Infrastructure; Energy Conservation
1. Introduction
Please refer to Table 1. Taiwan’s total energy use in the
transport sector was 15546.3 MOLE in 2010 [1], acc-
ounting for 12.92% of the national final energy use. In
addition, the transport sector totally emitted 35.317 Mt-
CO2 [2] in 2010, with a share of 13.9% of national GHG
emissions. Based on the calculation of these data, the
carbon intensity of the transport sector is 0.00227 Mt-
CO2/MLOE, while that of entire nation is 0.00211 Mt-
CO2/MLOE. The possible explanation for the closeness
of these two values may be that half of Taiwan’s primary
energy supply is from crude oil and petroleum products.
Meanwhile, the land transportation, consuming 81.3% of
energy in the transport sector, should be sufficient to
represent the entire transport sector, in terms of energy
saving and carbon reduction.
As shown in Table 2, the industrial sector—the pri-
macy of oil consuming structure—used 48% national pe-
troleum in 2010 mainly for the manufacture of chemical
raw materials and relative products. The transport sector,
on the second place, with share of 30%, mainly used
energy in the forms of vehicle fuels, including 9722.1
million liters of gasoline and 4414.0 million liters of
diesel.
2. Energy Saving Strategies for Taiwan’s
Land Transport Sector
Please refer to Table 3. Pursuant to transport objects, the
“land transport” can be divided into two kinds of “man-
ned transport” and “freight”; the total energy consump-
tion of the former is about twice the latter’s. The small
passenger cars use 70% of energy in the manned trans-
port, accounting for 50% by taking the transport sector as
a whole. In other words, the small passenger cars use
one-tenth of Taiwan’s petroleum. Therefore, we regard
the small passenger cars as the major energy-saving
objects in the transport sector. The concrete measure is to
travel more frequently by rail transports that include
railway, high-speed rail and MRT (Mass Rapid Transit)
instead of driving cars, while the remaining cars are
made to be converted to electric vehicles to the maximal
extent. As shown in Table 3, in terms of energy intensity,
the electric vehicle is 50% of that of small passenger car,
while the rail transport is as low as 13%. Here, the unit of
energy intensity is LOE/p-km (i.e., liters of oil equiva-
lent per person per kilometer). The correspondingly
energy-saving measure for the second largest energy
user—motorcycle—is to encou rage people taking MRT
*Corresponding author.
Retracted

S.-M. LU ET AL. 17
Table 1. Energy consumption structure of the transport sector of Taiwan in 2010.
Energy resource Oil products Power Total
Fuel type Unit
Transport way
LPG
(Million liter)
Gasoline
(Million liter)
Aviation fuel
(Million liter)
Diesel
(Million liter)
Fuel oil
(Million liter)
Energy use
subtotal (MLOE) (MLOE) (MLOE)
International aviation - - 2473.9 - - 2199.1 - 2199.1
Domestic aviation - - 96.4 - - 85.7 - 85.7
Road 133.1 9722.1 - 4414.0 - 12643.9 - 12643.9
Railway - - - 31.9 - 29.7 286.7 316.4
Domestic water - - - 111.5 184.8 301.2 - 301.2
Total 133.1 9722.1 2570.3 4557.4 184.8 15259.6 286.7 15546.3
Data source: [1].
Table 2. Domestic oil products consumption.
Year 1990 2000 2010 1990-2010
Energy use unit and
percentage Item MLOE % MLOE % MLOE % Annual growth rate (%)
Power generation 5652.9 19.5 7484.1 17.0 3322.4 6.4 −2.6
Power plant’s self use 1819.8 6.3 2384.6 5.4 2006.8 3.9 0.5
Industry 7799.8 26.9 12709.1 28.8 24810.0 48.0 6.0
Transport 7958.9 27.4 14316.3 32.5 15259.6 29.5 3.3
Agriculture 1047.3 3.6 844.3 1.9 338.5 0.7 −5.5
Service 1225.6 4.2 1000.8 2.3 1150.2 2.2 −0.3
Residence 1240.2 4.3 1631.7 3.7 1317.5 2.5 0.3
Non-energy use 2261.9 7.8 3718.0 8.4 3513.1 6.8 2.2
Total (domestic use) 29006.5 100.0 44088.8 100.0 51718.2 100.0 2.9
Data source: [3].
Table 3. The energy intensit i e s of land transportations for 2010 and 2030.
Year 2010 2030
Technical Scenario Energy intensityTransport volume Energy useEnergy-saving measure Energy intensity
Unit - LOE/p-km Million person-km MLOE - LOE/p-km
Motorcycle 0.0241 66,795 1610 0.0124
Car 0.054 99,394 5367 0.027
Bus
Internal
combustion engine
0.024 15,843 380
Electrification mode
and rail mode
0.016
Railway 60% loaded 0.011 8998 99 0.007
Taipei 88% loaded 0.011 4237 47 0.01
Taichung - - - - 0.01
MRT
Kaohsiung 50% loaded 0.027 201 5 0.01
High speed rail 49% loaded 0.015 7491 112
Expanding transport
volumes: fully loaded,
increasing number
of runs and lines.
0.0075
Manned transport
Others - - 88 40 - -
Subtotal - - 203,047 7661 - -
Unit LOE/t-km Million ton-km MLOE LOE/t-km
Railway 0.025 873 22 Expanding transport volume 0.025
Large truck 0.046 57,614 2650 Rail mode 0.025
Freight
Small truck 0.18 2900 522 Hybrid mode (HEV) 0.1439
Subtotal - 61,387 3194 -
Total - - 10855 -
Data source: bureau of energy MOEA, ministry of transportation and communications.
Retracted

S.-M. LU ET AL.
18
or riding electric motorcycle, because their energy inten-
sities are only half.
Basically, for the same transport volume, the energy
used by rail transport is only 13% - 19% of traditional
car’s or 50% of electric vehicle’s. Apparently, among the
manned transports, the rail transport is more energy-
efficient than electric car and of course much more
energy-efficient than traditional vehicle. Moreover, for
the transport sector to meet the goals of energy conser-
vation and carbon reduction, it would be much more
economical and feasible by increasing the number of
runs of the rail transports, instead of purchasing gigantic
amount of electric vehicles additionally, because there
are already many kinds of rail transports in Taiwan, like,
the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway and MRT. But
motorcycle is not the case, because the MRT is almost as
energy efficient as electric motorcycle in terms of energy
intensity 0.01 LOE/p-km and 0.0124 LOE/p-km respec-
tively while that of traditional motorcycle is 0.0241
LOE/p-km. Therefore, the MRT and electric motorcycle
are as twice energy-efficient as traditional motorcycle.
But due to personal convenience, motorcycle is very po-
pular in Taiwan. Impressively, every Taiwanese owns
0.64 unit of motorcycle [4,5]. Therefore, traditional mo-
torcycles have 33% transport volume but only use 21%
energy in the manned transport sector. Motorcycles do
contribute significant energy conservation in Taiwan’s
transport infrastructure. So basically in the manned vehi-
cles, the main energy-saving measure for the small pas-
senger cars should concentrate on transferring their trans-
port volume to MRT, while that for traditional motor-
cycles is mainly on their electrification mode.
Please refer to Table 3. As for freight sector, the main
energy users are large trucks with transport volume share
of 83%. However, in the unit of liters of oil equivalent
per ton per kilometer (LOE/t-km), the energy intensity of
large truck is twice that of rail transport (e.g., Taiwan
Railway). On the other hand, the energy intensity of
small truck is remarkably high, about four times that of
large truck and seven times that of Taiwan Railway.
Obviously, railway transport has significant energy-sav-
ing advantage over the traditional trucks. However, rail-
way has very low transport share (1.4%) in Taiwan’s
freight sector. Therefore, the proposed energy-saving
measure for freight is to shift the majority of large trucks
to railway. In addition, in small trucks, the internal com-
bustion engines should be converted to electric motors,
because the energy consumption could be lowered by
20%.
3. Energy-Saving and Carbon Reducing
Program for Taiwan’s Land Transport
As shown in Table 4 and Figure 1, among many plan-
ning programs, we only illustrate the most energy-saving
one—“1) maximizing the MRT; 2) increasing the num-
Figure 1. Transport volume distribution of manned vehicl es
from 2010 to 2030.
ber of runs of high-speed rail and Taiwan Railway; and 3)
partly electrifying the motorcycles”—as this article’s
“the best energy saving and carbon reducing program for
the manned transport sector of Taiwan from 2010 to
2030”, which is highlighted as follows.
1) Expanding the operations of Taipei MRT to 3 times
that of 2010;
2) Expanding the operations of Taichung MRT to 2
times that of 2020; two operation lines will be completed
for Taichung MRT in 2020, the transport volume of
which is assessed based upon the growing background of
Kaohsiung MRT;
3) Expanding the transport volume of Kaohsiung MRT
to 3 times that of 2010;
4) Expanding the transport volumes of Taiwan Rail-
way and high-speed rail to 1.8 times and 2 times respec-
tively those of 2010, the concrete measures of which are
the increase of number of runs;
5) Transferring the reduced transport volume of small
passenger cars to the high-speed rail and Taiwan Railway;
meanwhile, transferring the reduced transport volume of
motorcycles to MRT, as described in the above; and 80%
remaining transport volumes of buses, cars and motor-
cycles are all practiced with electrification mode.
In this article, we adopt the “Top-Down” analytic me-
thodology. Therefore, the data shown in Table 3 all come
from the government departments, for example, Ministry
of Economic Affairs and Ministry of Transport and Com-
munications. Here, we use the “million personkm” as the
unit of transport volume of manned vehicles and “million
ton-km” for the freight transports. As shown in Figures 1
and 2, basically, the respective total transport volume in
“manned sector” and “freight sector” remains unchanged
from 2010 to 2030. Under the transfers of transport vo-
lume between various means of transport, the total trans-
port volume in 2010 is same as that in 2030, but the
distribution is different. In other words, the transport
volumes of less energy-efficient vehicles are transferred
to more energy-efficient vehicles, whereby the total ener-
gy use is reduced.
As shown in Table 4, according to above program, the
Retracted

S.-M. LU ET AL. 19
Table 4. Energy saving program and results of Taiwan’s land transport sector for 2030.
Year 2030
Transport’s energy-saving measures in the base year of 2010 Transport volume Energy
use
Energy-saving
volume
Unit - Million person-km MLOE MLOE
Motorcycle Partly transferring transport volume to MRT,
and electrifying the 80% remaining transport volume 54,579 804 805
Car Partly transferring transport volume to railway and high
speed rail, and electrifying the 80% remaining transport volume 58,312 1942 3425
Bus Electrifying the 80% transport volume 15,843 279 101
Railway 1.8 times the fully-loaded transport volume 26,995 189 −90
Taipei Triple the fully-loaded transport volume 14,445 144 −98
Taichung Double the fully-loaded transport volume of 2020 1004 10 −10
MRT
Kaohsiung Triple the fully-loaded transport volume 1205 12 −7
High speed rail Double the fully-loaded transport volume 30,576 229 −117
Manned transport
Others - 88 84 −44
Subtotal - 203,047 3694 3967 (51.8%)
Unit - Million ton-km MLOE MLOE
Railway Expanding transport volume by the 80%
transport volume of large truck 41,983 1050 −1028
Large truck 80% transport volume transferred to railway 16,503 759 1891
Freight
Small truck 80% transport volume transferred to HEV 2900 438 84
Subtotal - 61,387 2247 947 (30%)
Total - - 5941 4914 (45.3%)
Figure 2. Transport volume distribution of freight trans-
portations from 2010 to 2030.
transport volume decreased from motorcycles is the
transport volume increased to MRT. The same strategy is
practiced to small passenger cars and rail transports. No
surprise, the energy-saving amount of small passenger
cars—up to 3425 MLOE—almost covers the total ener-
gy-saving amount in the entire manned transport sector.
Additionally, as shown Figure 3, the energy-saving scale
is up to about 50% significantly by taking the manned
transport as a whole.
As shown in Table 4, the transport volume of small
passenger cars is effectively transferred to Taiwan Rail-
way and high-speed rail. Although the volume of rail
transport is increased significantly, the net energy-saving
amount is remarkable, due to the super low energy-
consuming intensity of rail transport. Under the electri-
fication mode, the increasing rate of electric vehicles for
the purpose of replacing cars and motorcycles—will be
20% in every five years, making this program very effec-
tive in energy conservation, because the original trans-
port volumes of cars and motorcycles are gigantic.
Next, please refer to Figure 2 and the left lower fields
of Tabl e 4. “The best energy-saving and carbon-reducing
program for the freight transport sector of Taiwan from
2010 to 2030” is highlighted as follows.
Transferring 80% freight volume of large truck to
Taiwan Railway. Converting 80% small trucks to hybrid
trucks.
Please refer to the lower half of Table 3. According to
the data provided by the Institute of Transportation,
MOTC, the large truck consumes about 1 liters of diesel,
after traveling 1 kilometer with 20 tons of load. Mean-
while, the small truck consumes 1 liters of gasoline, after
Retracted

S.-M. LU ET AL.
20
Figure 3. Energy use trend of manned vehicles from 2010 to
2030.
traveling three kilometers with 1.8 tons of load. There-
fore, the energy intensities of large truck and small truck
are 0.046LOE/t-km and 0.18LOE/t-km respectively.
As shown in Table 4, if transferring most road freight
volume to Taiwan Railway, the energy consumption could
be reduced significantly. Taiwan Railway is almost the
only main long-distance intercity transport (i.e., more
than 50 kilometers) to energy-efficiently replace the large
trucks. Therefore, in this program, 20% freight of large
trucks in 2010 is transferred to Taiwan Railway in every
five years. As for small truck, the main energy-saving
measure is focused on HEV. Please refer to the reference
[6]. There will be an energy saving of 20%, after the
small truck is converted to HEV (Hybrid Electric Vehi-
cle). Therefore, the freight energy saved from replacing
the small truck with HEV at a rate of 20% in every five
years can be calculated in the period between 2010 and
2030.
As shown in Table 4 and Figure 4, under the scenario
significantly reducing the freight volume of large trucks
and remarkably increasing the freight volume of Taiwan
Railway, the calculation results that the energy consumed
in the freight sector can be amazingly reduced 947 MLOE
by deducting the inferred 2247 MLOE in 2030 from the
original 3194 MLOE in 2010.
4. Conclusions and Discussion
Please refer to upper half of Table 3. The energy-using
share of the small passenger cars is about 50%, followed
by 25% of the large trucks, by taking the entire land
transport sector as a whole. It may deduce that the energy-
saving results of small passenger cars and large trucks
are crucial to the carbon-reducing credits of the entire
transport sector. As shown in Table 4, after adopting the
program: 1) maximizing the MRT; 2) increasing the
number of runs of Taiwan Railway and high-speed rail;
and 3) partly converting the motorcycles to electrifica-
tion mode; it is possible for the manned transport sector
Figure 4. Energy use trend of freight transportations from
2010 to 2030.
to save energy up to 3967 MLOE or 51.8%.
There are two measures for the energy-saving program
of mall passenger cars: the first is to transfer 41.3%
transport volume to Taiwan Railway and high-speed rail;
the second is to convert 45.0% transport volume to elec-
trification mode. According to the calculated results, the
energy-conserving shares will be 56.0% and 35.2% res-
pectively. Obviously, the rail mode is remarkably supe-
rior to the electrification mode.
Please refer to the lower half of Table 4. On the aspect
of freight transport, when shifting the large truck to
Taiwan Railway and converting the small truck from
fossil-fueled mode to hybrid mode respectively at a ratio
of 80% in terms of transport volume, the total energy
saving will be 947 MLOE or 30%. Wherein, the energy
saving of the largest energy consumer—the large truck—
is up to 1891 MLOE or 70%. But overall, the effective-
ness of the energy-saving is limited, because at the same
time, the energy consumed by Taiwan Railway increases
1006 MLOE significantly. However, as mentioned above,
in the energy saving measures of rail mode, the only one
thing needed to do for the Taiwan Railway is to increase
the number of runs. From the economical point of view,
it is still very worthy.
From above analyses, the total energy saving amount
of both manned and freight transports is 4914 MLOE,
which is equivalent to GHG reduction of 10.56 Mt-CO2
approximately with a scale of 45.3%. Meanwhile, the
resulted shares are 4.08% and 4.15% respectively on the
national aspects of energy conservation and carbon re-
duction.
Finally, from above data analyses and results discus-
sion, we suggest two green strategies for the land trans-
port sector of Taiwan. First of all, the extensive adoption
of rail mode, including the increase of number of runs
and the expansion of transport volumes, is the most ef-
fective energy-saving measure, particularly for the small
passenger cars and large trucks that should be replaced
by rail transport in a large scale. Secondly, as the popula-
rity of motorcycles in Taiwan, instead of being replaced
Retracted

S.-M. LU ET AL.
21
by rail transport completely, we suggest the adoption of
electric motorcycle should be more feasible and econo-
mical, due to the considerations of personal convenience
and dense population in Taiwan.
5. Acknowledgements
This paper is one of the research results of National Sci-
ence and Technology Program-Energy (NSTPE) spon-
sored by National Science Council (Taiwan).
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Retracted