Establishment and applied research on green economy assessment indicators in Taiwan

Following the global trend of sustainable development, development of green economy is the best way of slowing the negative ecological and environmental impact. This research establishes the Taiwan´s green economic indicators based on the ecological footprint and energy analysis. The results are as follows: Taiwan´s ecological footprint in 2008 intensity index was at 4.364; ecological overshoot index was at 3.364, showing that Taiwan´s ecological system is in overload state. Moreover, Taiwan´s emergy per capita and the utilization rate of emergy is lower while the environmental loading rate is significantly higher comparing to some other countries. The foregoing findings indicate that Taiwan currently belongs to an economic development pattern based on high resource-consumption. The economic development is mainly established on the exploitation and utilization of nonrenewable resources. Therefore, Taiwan should change the development pattern, regulate the industrial structure, promote the utilization rate of resources, develop green pollution-free products and enhance the sustainable development of ecological economic system.