The chairman of a leading electronics company yesterday accused the government of dragging its feet in pushing bills to promote innovative green technology.
“Why is it that policies related to the development of renewable energy, natural resource management, energy taxation and carbon dioxide reduction have been under discussion forever? Meanwhile, gambling bills took no time to pass at the Legislative Yuan,” Bruce Cheng (鄭崇華), founder and chairman of Delta Electronics Inc (台達電子), said at an IBM forum in Taipei.
“Taiwan cannot build its future on gambling. We have to transform the country from an information technology center into an energy technology center ... That is the way of the future,” Cheng said.
In response, Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) said he could not comment on any issue that is currently under review in the legislature.
However, Yiin said he agreed with Cheng that with the global economic downturn, the time was ripe for the government to push green technology.
“For the next four years, the government has a NT$500 billion [US$14.82 billion] stimulus package with 10 percent of the budget allocated to green technology,” Yiin told the audience.
Cheng criticized the government’s energy policy, saying he found it hard to understand how Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) was able to buy electricity for as little as NT$1.70 (US$0.05) per kilowatt hour (kwh).
In Germany, utility companies buy solar-generated electricity at about 0.38 euro (NT$17) per kwh, he said.
“At NT$1.70 per kwh, what is the incentive for Taipower to purchase solar or wind-generated power” from other independent power producers? Cheng asked.
Yiin did not answer the question directly, but said that “if Taipower were to buy electricity at say, NT$17 per kwh, it would go bankrupt.”
Cheng said that the ministry should allow state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) to gradually revert back to letting market mechanisms determine domestic oil prices rather than continue selling gasoline and diesel at below-market prices and absorbing the losses.
Once oil prices become unbearable, the public would find ways to save money such as taking mass transportation, driving less, or looking into alternative energy vehicles, 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