The government is encouraging the establishment of offshore wind farms, which are seen as a future trend in wind power development, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said yesterday.
Compared with the construction of turbines on land, where there is limited space suitable for wind farms, Taiwan’s surrounding waters are an ideal environment for wind power generation because of the steady wind flow and the rare occurrence of turbulence, a statement issued by the CEPD said.
Under a project launched by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in September 2007, applications will be accepted until Aug. 30 for the establishment of offshore wind farms, with total installed capacity of up to 300 megawatts allowed, the council said.
A one-stop counter has been set up under the ministry to speed up the screening of the applications as they could involve a wide range of issues such as fishing rights, national defense and environmental impact assessments.
Statistics from the Bureau of Energy show that there are 196 operational wind turbines with total installed capacity of 372MW around Taiwan. Another 132 wind turbines with total installed capacity of 284MW are under construction.
According to last year’s World Wind Energy Report released by the World Wind Energy Association, worldwide installed wind power capacity reached 159.213 gigawatts last year, up 31.7 percent from the previous year.
All wind turbines installed as of the end of last year are generating 340 terawatt-hours of electricity per annum, equaling 2 percent of global electricity consumption, the report said.
The association has predicted that global capacity will increase to 1,900 GW this year.
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