Minister of Economic Affairs Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) yesterday left some leeway on the government’s policy to phase out nuclear power by 2025 following a meeting with seven of the nation’s biggest trade groups.
Industry representatives have voiced concerns about possible energy shortages and businesses’ ability to absorb anticipated energy price hikes that could arise from the government’s planned energy mix, which would rely heavily on natural gas to meet half of total consumption with another 20 percent to be furnished by the nascent renewable energy industry, while the share of coal-fired power generation would be reduced on an annual basis.
The government would take all factors into consideration, Shen said in response to General Chamber of Commerce (全國商業總會) chairman Lai Cheng-i’s (賴正鎰) suggestion that the government keep nuclear power generation in reserve.
The ministry last month said that legal and technical hurdles, and resistance from local governments, have all but made it impossible to activate the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) or delay the scheduled decommissioning of other nuclear power plants.
“It is not that the government has ruled out nuclear power, but the obstacles are insurmountable,” Shen later said in a statement.
Lai also voiced concerns about possible geopolitical events that could disrupt Taiwan’s natural gas supply.
Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會) chairman Lin Por-fong (林伯豐) expressed disappointment over the government’s inability to carry out last year’s referendum results to scrap the 2025 deadline to phase out nuclear power.
The government’s energy strategy would support local industries while maintaining a reserve power generation margin of 10 percent, Shen said, adding that energy prices would rise at a manageable rate in the absence of nuclear energy.
The government would expand pumped-storage hydroelectricity capacity to address the intermittent and unreliable nature of alternative energy sources, and build infrastructure to ensure that gas-fired power plants have stable fuel supplies, Shen said.
In related news, Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) yesterday declined a request by the central government to delay the retirement of an old coal-fired unit at the Taichung Power Plant, and instead decided to keep up to two of its 10 units offline during months with peak air pollution.
The old unit must be permanently retired to achieve the city’s emissions reduction goals, Lu said, adding that the capacity shortfall can be made up by making adjustments at other coal-fired power plants in New Taipei City and Kaohsiung.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts