The formation of energy resource policies inevitably involves political considerations. When economic and environmental considerations come into conflict, the final policy decision is certain to be a political one, arrived at after weighing up the pros and cons. It could be called policymaking because decisionmakers must bear political responsibility and face tests.
Nonetheless, energy resource policy decisions cannot ignore the economic, social, technological and environmental characteristics of energy issues.
Taiwan’s energy shortages are not caused by insufficient capacity, rather, they are caused by factors such as maintenance and repairs, breakdowns, and matters pertaining to contracts and environmental protection. These factors prevent thermal generating units from effectively transforming the system’s planned net peak power into operational net peak power.
Notably, reactor No. 1 at the Jinshan (金山) Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Shihmen District (石門) and reactor No. 2 at the Guosheng (國聖) Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) have not been restarted following annual maintenance and repairs. As a result, their generation capacity, totaling 1.621 gigawatts, cannot contribute to the system’s operational net peak power. If unpredictable high temperatures occur, causing the instantaneous peak load to climb, it would have a serious impact on the stability of electricity supply and greatly increase the risk of summertime peak power shortages.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) and related government departments should do their utmost to prevent power shortage risks increasing, which leads to economic losses. They must also prevent temporary power shortages from becoming a medium to long-term systematic crisis. If that were to happen it would obstruct the government’s developmental course of economic structural transformation and lose the impetus for a transformation of the existing system to a low-carbon one.
To resolve power shortages, it is important to get nuclear reactors whose annual maintenance and repairs have been completed back online as baseload power suppliers, while accepting their role in activating the economy with low-carbon emissions.
In combination with the demand bidding measures Taipower has been promoting for big demand-side users — whereby the power load is reduced from the demand side — it is the only way to get through the shortages.
This course of action runs contrary to activists’ demands who advocate immediately scrapping nuclear power generation. However, practically speaking, even if all of the renewable energy generation facilities that are already installed were mobilized, they would still not be able to provide a better guarantee of power supply reliability. The whole system would still be in a highly fragile state.
The alternatives to nuclear power as baseload electricity generation units, namely coal-powered and gas-powered thermal power stations, have higher fuel costs and produce far greater carbon dioxide emissions.
Allowing non-operational nuclear reactors to restart would be an ideal policy decision for the economy, the environment and for energy security.
Will the government give priority to “solving the problem?” Will it maintain a pragmatic and objective attitude to nuclear power, allowing plants to be decommissioned as originally scheduled? If so, nuclear power can provide a stable and low-carbon energy source, helping Taiwan’s power supply system make an economically efficient transition to a low-carbon model as early as possible.
Chang Ssu-li is a distinguished professor in National Taiwan University’s Institute of Natural Resources Management.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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