Stop idling, Taiwan
Having spent 18 months teaching English in Taichung, I’m concerned about Taiwan’s future if the air quality does not improve. Children who should be able to run and play for hours end up coughing because of the congestion in their lungs. I realize that industry is the cause of most of the pollution, but there is something the average person can do.
It’s a fact that vehicles, when idling, do not run efficiently and expel more exhaust than when driving. A vehicle that idles for more than 20 seconds wastes gas and pollutes. The solution is simple: Many of Taiwan’s traffic lights show the time left until traffic will move. If a vehicle arrives at a stop signal with more than 20 seconds showing on the display, turn your car or scooter engine off. When the display hits 10 seconds, turn it back on. When you are picking up your children from school, turn the engine off. When you are stopping to buy a drink, turn the engine off. In fact, turn it off any time you will be stopped longer than 10 seconds.
It is estimated that the average vehicle using this method could save NT$10,000 in fuel per year and alleviate unnecessary wear and tear on engines. Modern vehicles do not need to idle. Here is a Web site that gives some great information: www.makealeap.org/idling_myth.
Since moving to Taiwan, I have developed asthma and serious lung problems. Sadly, I will have to leave because I can’t breathe. I have loved living here. The people are amazing, the country is so beautiful and the culture is so wonderfully different.
Please, for the sake of the nation’s children, do your part to reduce harmful carbon emissions. I have written to the Ministry of Environment [sic] with this suggestion. If you agree, please e-mail them as well.
JOANNE ROSEN
Taichung
Numbers don’t add up
In his article (“Embracing a non-nuclear future,” April 4, page 8) former Environmental Protection Agency minister Winston Dang (陳重信) said that if renewable energy output in Taiwan could be raised to 25 percent of total electricity production, there would be no reason why a future administration headed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential hopeful Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) could not phase out nuclear energy. That would mean raising the output of renewables from 9 terawatt (TW) hours to 58TW hours from the annual total for electricity production of 229.7TW hours. Let us consider how that scale of output could be achieved by means of four sources of energy: combined-cycle gas turbines, onshore wind farms, offshore wind farms and solar photovoltaic.
The 58TW hours target could be achieved by 14 top-class combined-cycle, multi-shaft gas turbines (848 megawatts [MW] each operating at 58 percent efficiency) for a capital cost very similar to the Longmen nuclear power plant (NT$280 billion [US$9.56 billion]) covering approximately 7km2.
In reference to an onshore wind farm facility, and extrapolating from data pertaining to the Enercon E-126 turbine with a power rating of 7MW, Dang’s target of 58TW hours annually would require 2,478 such mega-turbines, operating at 30 percent efficiency on 398km2 of land at a capital cost just shy of NT$57 billion. While the capital cost is much cheaper than the gas option, such a wind farm would require 40 percent more land than Taipei City.
To extrapolate from the published figures for the UK’s largest offshore wind farm, the London Array (NT$91 billion; 1,000MW power rating; 195km2), such a wind farm in Taiwan, assuming it would operate at 30 percent efficiency, could generate 58 TW hours annually only if its power rating was increased to 19,400MW — which would mean so many turbines as to consume 3,770km2 at a capital cost of NT$1.8 trillion. That’s the size of 14 Taipei Cities — at sea!
Taking our bearings from the Lhuju solar plant, 58TW hours a year could only be generated by so many such plants that they would have a combined power rating of 6,600MW, cover an area of 7,250km2 (or 26.5 Taipei Cities) and cost almost NT$9 trillion. Even if a Tsai administration decided to make solar cell purchases compulsory for every rooftop in all of Taiwan’s cities, that would only take up at most 3,422km2 (the real figure is probably a third of this), and only 27.3TW hours a year.
In his article, Dang went so far as to claim that not only would 25 percent of total electricity production be an appropriate target for renewable investment to aim for, but that Taiwanese should even be aiming for 100 percent by 2050. With numbers this bad, who could even trust Dang with the till at a local 7-Eleven?
MICHAEL FAGAN
Tainan
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
Eighty-seven percent of Taiwan’s energy supply this year came from burning fossil fuels, with more than 47 percent of that from gas-fired power generation. The figures attracted international attention since they were in October published in a Reuters report, which highlighted the fragility and structural challenges of Taiwan’s energy sector, accumulated through long-standing policy choices. The nation’s overreliance on natural gas is proving unstable and inadequate. The rising use of natural gas does not project an image of a Taiwan committed to a green energy transition; rather, it seems that Taiwan is attempting to patch up structural gaps in lieu of
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators have twice blocked President William Lai’s (賴清德) special defense budget bill in the Procedure Committee, preventing it from entering discussion or review. Meanwhile, KMT Legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) proposed amendments that would enable lawmakers to use budgets for their assistants at their own discretion — with no requirement for receipts, staff registers, upper or lower headcount limits, or usage restrictions — prompting protest from legislative assistants. After the new legislature convened in February, the KMT joined forces with the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and, leveraging their slim majority, introduced bills that undermine the Constitution, disrupt constitutional
The Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office on Monday announced that they would not countersign or promulgate the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) passed by the Legislative Yuan — a first in the nation’s history and the ultimate measure the central government could take to counter what it called an unconstitutional legislation. Since taking office last year, the legislature — dominated by the opposition alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party — has passed or proposed a slew of legislation that has stirred controversy and debate, such as extending
RSS