Fifty-three hospitals, hotels and department stores with a total of 166 locations signed an energy-saving agreement yesterday to reduce their contribution to carbon dioxide emissions, pledging to cut electricity consumption by 5 percent within three years.
Bureau of Energy statistics indicated that the joint effort would help save 130 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and put NT$1.04 billion into the market for products that conserve energy.
In addition, the efforts should cut carbon dioxide emissions by 83,000 tonnes, which is equivalent to building 224 Da-an Forest parks, the bureau’s report showed.
“Although South Korea has implemented coercive measures to enforce energy conservation, our government believes that saving energy is a universal value and will gain public support. As a result, we have decided to begin with voluntary energy conservation measures,” Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) said at a press conference yesterday.
Yiin said that the ministry hoped to reduce the growth of carbon dioxide emissions, putting emissions in 2020 at this year’s level and cutting emissions to their level in 2000 by 2025.
Electricity consumption in the service sector has gone up by 3.9 percent annually on average over the past five years, the statistics showed.
Electricity consumption in relation to floor space at hospitals, hotels and department stores is between 1.2 times and 2.1 times higher than that of normal office buildings, the report said.
Sean Chuang (莊秀石), chairman of the Taiwan Tourist Hotel Association (中華民國觀光旅館商業同業公會), said yesterday that energy conservation was almost impossible for the hospitality industry — especially for five-star hotels — as many measures would be considered disrespectful to hotel guests. However, hotels can start with replacing automatic doors with revolving doors, using energy-saving lights bulbs and planting trees.
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
The global server market is expected to grow 12.8 percent annually this year, with artificial intelligence (AI) servers projected to account for 16.5 percent, driven by continued investment in AI infrastructure by major cloud service providers (CSPs), market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. Global AI server shipments this year are expected to increase 28 percent year-on-year to more than 2.7 million units, driven by sustained demand from CSPs and government sovereign cloud projects, TrendForce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) told the Taipei Times. Demand for GPU-based AI servers, including Nvidia Corp’s GB and Vera Rubin rack systems, is expected to remain high,
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