German firm InfraVest Wind Power Co (英華威集團), Taiwan’s only private wind power generator, confirmed yesterday it was pulling out of the market because it “doesn’t have confidence” in the government’s push for renewable energy.
“It is ending now,” vice president Yuni Wang (王雲怡) said. “We are not putting more investment into Taiwan this year.”
Without further capital, the company will not build more wind farms or purchase wind turbines, she told the Taipei Times at her Taipei office, adding the company was in the middle of “dealing with” its existing equipment.
The measures include selling the equipment and wind farms, she said, but the company was still waiting for the announcement of concrete details.
InfraVest has more than 50 employees in Taipei and it recently retrenched one-fifth of them, with a second layoff to come in the next two months, she said. Employees approached for a comment refused to say anything except that they “were worried.”
The company entered Taiwan in 2000 and has since poured more than NT$10 billion (US$3 billion) into local operations. Its pullout follows the government’s announcement in December that it would buy energy produced by private firms’ wind-powered generators at NT$2.38 per kilowatt.
“This is too low and for us to make a profit. The price should be in the range of NT$2.9 to NT$3.5 per kilowatt, like what is happening in China,” Wang said.
The Bureau of Energy said that the tariffs were decided after public hearings and evaluation committee’s meetings, adding it would be hard to please every company.
Since the government’s purchase of renewable energy would be transferred to the public, the tariffs must not burden the public, the bureau said in a statement.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
Pegatron Corp (和碩), a key assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, on Thursday reported a 12.3 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for last quarter to NT$257.86 billion (US$8.44 billion), but it expects revenue to improve in the second half on traditional holiday demand. The fourth quarter is usually the peak season for its communications products, a company official said on condition of anonymity. As Apple released its new iPhone 17 series early last month, sales in the communications segment rose sequentially last month, the official said. Shipments to Apple have been stable and in line with earlier expectations, they said. Pegatron shipped 2.4 million notebook
RSS