When Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, put forward his vision for an energy policy on Aug. 21, he proposed that work on the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) could be restarted under certain conditions. This proposal has sparked a new war of words between the pan-blue and pan-green political camps.
To defeat their opponents, some Taiwanese politicians put the debate about energy resources in terms that suggest that if we do not have nuclear power, we will have to burn coal, and if we do not burn coal, we will have to have nuclear power. To this end, they are not shy of belittling or even completely negating the value of renewable energy sources and improved energy efficiency, which are much less controversial and have considerable potential.
According to the Democratic Progressive Party government’s energy transition agenda, 20 percent of the nation’s electricity should be generated from renewable sources by 2025. At present, this target relies almost completely on solar panels and wind power, which is mainly generated in coastal areas and offshore.
Many countries have been adopting biomass energy to replace coal-fired power generation, with a view to improving air quality, so biomass has good prospects for continued growth. In Taiwan, biomass, which is mainly derived from plants, is a 100 percent indigenous source of energy. With Taiwan’s advantageous conditions for plant growth, it should be possible to guarantee a steady supply of biomass energy, which can compensate for the inherent weakness of wind and solar energy, namely their intermittent nature.
At present, the world’s main source of fuel for biomass energy is wood, but there are others, such as agricultural waste products and sorted garbage. From a sustainability point of view, biomass can reduce pollution and greenhouse emissions generated in these substances’ lifecycle, while also avoiding undesirable social, environmental and economic impacts and helping to decarbonize the entire system of energy resources.
In the past few years, many architects and construction businesses around the world have woken up to the fact that wooden construction materials are not only aesthetically pleasing, but also sustainable and regenerable. Although Taiwan has rich forestry resources, it has had a long love affair with reinforced concrete. Following technical advances in the construction of large timber buildings, along with the relaxation of restrictions in construction laws, large wooden buildings have started appearing in places around the world.
Notably, March of this year saw the opening of the 18-story Mjosa Tower in Norway. This tower, which is now the world’s tallest timber building, is mainly built out of cross-laminated timber.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, and when they are turned into building material, the carbon dioxide within them is fixed within the finished wooden product. When a timber building reaches the end of its useful life, most of the timber can be retrieved and reused as building material, so that the carbon dioxide stored in the timber never goes back into the atmosphere.
There is already a high degree of consensus in Taiwan about the need to reduce our use of fossil fuels, especially coal, to reduce air pollution, cut carbon emissions and pursue sustainability. Taiwan has advantageous conditions for growing trees, so well-managed forests are perpetually renewable, and this allows them to play an important role as resources for energy and other purposes. Using wood for biomass is good for keeping trees healthy and for improving the ecology of forests, and it can also help develop leisure and tourism, bringing job opportunities to isolated areas.
Promoting biomass energy involves adjusting the overall orientation of policies governing forestry, agriculture and even the construction industry. The tug-of-war between the use and conservation of resources is also a perennial problem in environmental politics. It is therefore foreseeable that the development of biomass energy will give rise to heated debate and opposition when the government first proposes it.
For example, the connection between biomass energy and tree felling needs to be clarified. Other tasks include redefining the purpose of planting forests to take into account the production of other items such as bamboo. It also needs to encompass water and soil conservation, scenery preservation, and environmental and ecological friendliness.
The next step would be to establish a full set of complementary measures for nurturing trees and improving tree quality by thinning plantations through intermediate felling. The foremost issue is the urgent need to establish relevant scientific information.
Apart from this, the limitations, obstacles and pitfalls that confront biomass energy need to be understood, as well as its potential and benefits.
Biomass is, after all, the most complex form of renewable energy and the one that has been given the least positive attention, but if it is handled in the right way, it might well come to play a key role in a low-carbon economy.
Using the locations and equipment of decommissioned power stations such as the former Shenao (深澳) coal-fired power plant in New Taipei City’s Rueifang District (瑞芳) to establish model biomass power stations could be the first step toward fostering robust growth of Taiwan’s biomass energy industry.
Hua Jian is a professor in National Taiwan Ocean University’s marine engineering department.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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