With the entire world adjusting to achieve net-zero emissions, every county and city in Taiwan has begun formulating action plans to this end. In the 2022 ING Earth Day Forum in New Taipei in April, New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih expressed his commitment to the practice of engaging in sustainable action with international businesses. November 22 2022, Google announced that Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE)—a free platform that helps cities and regions to control emissions—would be available in Taiwan. New Taipei City is the first city in Taiwan to join the platform to visualize its environmental data.

EIE was cocreated by Google and the Global Covenant of Mayors (CGoM) and released in 2018. Using Google's exclusive data sources and AI modeling capabilities, EIE is able to estimate the emissions of each city and region as well as their reduction potential—these estimates are accessible to the public. In addition to simplifying complex data compilation and analysis processes and reducing the cost of estimating carbon emission sources, EIE can provide governments and city planners with systematically organized data as a foundation for drafting emission reduction strategies.

New Taipei City Secretary General Yao Chingyu stated that EIE was designed for cities; it assists governments and city planners in identifying local carbon emissions and renewable energy development potential and creating a blueprint for urban sustainability from a macro perspective. New Taipei City is the first city in Taiwan to have its data displayed in Google EIE, and the incorporation of third-party data is expected to help the municipal government with planning large-scale infrastructure and construction of transportation systems and networks. In addition to creating an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) advocacy platform on its bilingual Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) website, New Taipei City has promoted sustainability with international businesses in the hopes of having more opportunities for cross-border ESG collaboration in the future.



The Transportation Department reported that data collection can be simplified through the EIE platform services. Furthermore, more comprehensive data on carbon emissions in New Taipei City, the analysis of this data, and the adoption of corresponding action will be of considerable assistance in developing policies that promote modes of transportation powered by green energy.

Google plans to release a version of EIE in Traditional Chinese in the near future to enable government agencies, city planners, and the general public in Taiwan to take action to reduce carbon emissions. The open data collected on EIE include building and transportation emission, rooftop solar potential, air quality, and tree canopy coverage data. These data are entirely open to the public to view and use. Google has also leveraged machine learning techniques to further assist government agencies and city decision makers in running analyses and identifying solutions to reduce emissions.