As Taiwan grows more enthusiastic over the development of renewable energy, a researcher is suggesting that the government put the brakes on traveling in that direction before more energy is wasted.
"Many studies have found that the energy devoted to produce renewable energy and biofuel has exceeded output energy," Daigee Shaw (蕭代基), president of the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中經院), said at a press conference yesterday.
More energy is required to produce a solar cell than the cell can generate in its lifetime, Shaw said.
Attacking enthusiasm for cure-all renewable energy, Shaw said pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are still being generated during production of green energy.
Limited and unstable supplies of renewable energy, such as through wind power, solar power and hydraulic power, can hardly meet growing demand, Shaw said.
As a result, the government should review its energy policy and develop renewable energies that can yield net energy, he said.
The institution has submitted suggestions to the government for re-examining renewable energy policy. But the Cabinet insisted on a policy of pushing the installed capacity of renewable energy to 10 percent by 2010, Shaw said.
Taiwan imports more than 98 percent of its energy, and feels the pinch whenever energy prices rise.
The nation may suffer power shortages within five years unless additional generators are built, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in June last year.
The government will favor plans for coal-fired stations when it awards contracts to build new capacity next year because they are cheaper to run and easier to supply than those fueled by gas.
"It looks like we'll have to rely on coal," Chan Wen-hong, an executive officer at the Bureau of Energy, said on Thursday.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower,
The new projects aim to supply an extra 1,980 megawatts of capacity, enough to meet 5 percent of the nation's peak summer electricity demand. Tenders close on Dec. 5, and the government is likely to name two or three contract winners before the end of this February, Chan said.
"The choice of coal is pragmatic," Jeffrey Bor (
Gas-fired power plants are less favored because of shortages in supply and the time needed to build pipelines, he 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