Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) chairman Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) yesterday urged the government to halt construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant and scrape the state-owned Taiwan Power Co's (台電) project to build a natural gas-fueled power plant in Tatan Township, Taoyuan County.
"The cost of gas-fueled power is too much and will incur high electricity prices in the country," Wang said in a Chinese-language newspaper report.
"The Tatan power plant should be coal-fueled, which is expected to save NT$30 billion annually," he said, adding both gas-fueled and coal-fueled electricity generation processes can meet similar environmental protection standards.
Without giving a figure, Wu said the nation's proportion of coal-fueled electricity should be raised.
Wang's remarks drew mixed reactions from both government and business officials yesterday.
Wang Yun-ming (
According to the commission, gas-powered electricity currently accounts for 20 percent of the nation's energy and will be increased to between 27 to 29 percent in the future while coal-fueled power accounts for 33 percent and will be raised to between 35 and 37 percent.
An analyst yesterday gave credit to Wang Yung-ching's initiative in attempting to revise the nation's energy policy.
"[Formosa Plastics'] Wang makes a point," said Murphy Huang (
Taiwan's energy policy problems are mostly due to power misallocation, which leads to wasted electricity, rather than in the method of generating electricity, Huang said.
Huang also credited Wang Yung-ching as being a smart businessman, saying his energy proposal, if it was attempted by the government, could be expected to benefit Wang's own 1,800MW Mai-Liao Power Corporation (
In addition, Wang Yung-ching's future success in building a steel plant in Taiwan may depend on an increasing dependence on low-cost coal-fueled electricity, which is the key to finalizing his steel-plant project, Huang added.
Another industry watcher, Henry Wu (吳宏能), vice president of Taiwan Cogeneration Corp (台灣汽電), disagreed with Wang's views.
Wu said that the strategy of diversifying methods of generating electricity should be upheld and he therefore disagreed with Wang's suggestion of increasing coal-fueled power plants, which, he pointed out, will generate carbon dioxide.
"Despite high electricity prices, clean energy production should be supported," Wu said.
Wu said that Taiwan's electricity prices are not comparatively high, being on average half the cost of Japan's prices and 20 percent lower than those in South Korea.
Higher revenue from utilities will support the nation's efforts to develop recycled energy sources which have less of an impact on the environment, Wu said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained