Foreign entrepreneurs and Taiwanese academics yesterday urged the government to develop clear policies and foster consensus among the public if the nation wants to develop renewable energy sources and increase renewables’ proportion of the nation’s overall energy makeup to 20 percent by 2025.
“There is, of course, a need for stable government policies on renewable energy, as this is an industry that needs long-term investments for it to develop,” Bill Chiu (邱維倫), managing director for grid modernization and resiliency at Southern California Edison Co, told a news conference at a workshop on strategies for a sustainable energy future held by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院) in Taipei.
“However, that brings us another important thing to consider... How to involve the public in the development of renewable energy?” Chiu said.
It is important to have public support in the drive for more renewable energy in this nation, he added.
Chong Ng (黃宗華), head of applied research of ORE Catapult, a UK-based innovation and research center for offshore wind, wave and tidal energy, said that support from the public would eventually come as the industry develops, which was the case with the UK’s wind power industry.
“People will start seeing the benefits [of adopting renewable energy] once the industry starts to mature, since the costs would come down,” Ng said.
The development of wind farms would attract more talent and business opportunities to Taiwan, stimulating its economy, he said.
“Education is very important too. We need to get more [local] research centers and universities involved,” he said.
As the nation is still taking baby steps in the development of renewable energy, it is natural for it to face technical challenges head-on, which always arise with the installation of electrical grids, said Lee Wei-jen (李偉仁), director of the Energy Systems Research Center at the University of Texas at Arlington.
“Take [for example] Taiwan’s wind power industry ... how do we transfer electricity in a steady and efficient manner all the while maintaining the quality?” Lee said.
The industry needs to have a complete system to manage the intermittent character of generating wind power, he said.
Local authorities should shed more light on the inner workings of renewable energy industries as unclear policies often create murky waters where blame shifting and work inefficiencies can occur, he added.
Additional reporting by staff writer
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to