Foreign voices played vital role

Local activists opposed to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant encountered stiff resistance for over two decades while Taiwan was ruled by the KMT.

Then, encouraged by the DPP's victory in the March presidential election, activists reignited their campaign to abandon nuclear power. Boosting their cause during the period between the presidential election and Premier Chang Chun-hsiung's (張俊雄) announcement Friday to scrap the plant was support not only from local residents but also from their counterparts abroad.

"Incorporating updated information from the international community by working with foreign anti-nuclear activists and energy experts did inspire the DPP-led central government to terminate the controversial project," anti-nuclear activist Chang Kuo-lung (張國龍) told the Taipei Times.

Chang is one of five professors in the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) opposed to the plant who took part in three months of debate at meetings held by the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant Re-evaluation Committee (核四再評估委員會), convened by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

Between the large-scale demonstration in May to the September recommendation by Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Hsin-yi (林信義) to former premier Tang Fei's (唐飛) desire to terminate the controversial project, Taiwanese people saw Japanese demonstrators wearing banners and heard US and German experts promote renewable energy sources at international meetings.

Moreover, reports from countries such as Denmark and Australia showed the successful use of wind power and solar energy and offered Taiwanese people a new direction in the energy sector.

Behind the scenes, high-ranking DPP officials met with Taiwanese experts and businessmen, who were trying to introduce technologies for renewable technologies from abroad.

At meetings of the MOEA's re-evaluation committee, anti-nuclear committee members presented radical ideas for adopting renewable sources of energy.

"When we presented ideas for adopting micro-power and soft energy strategy, government officials in charge of energy policy and electric industrial policy admitted that they had very little knowledge about such ideas," said Chang of TEPU, who is also a physics professor at National Taiwan University.

The idea of developing decentralized micro power plants has become quite common in Western countries. These power stations are seen as more reliable, since communities can build their own local generators and need not worry about power failures due to downed power lines that cross rugged terrain.

The term "soft energy," originally introduced by US energy expert Amory Lovins more than 20 years ago, has become the benchmark for developed countries when considering reforms to their energy policy.

In the mid-1970s, energy policymakers projected sky-rocketing energy demand in the decades to come and predicted that the rate of construction of power plants would have to increase exponentially to meet demand. Lovins called that the "hard path." Meanwhile, he proposed an alternative, "soft path" using energy-efficient technologies to meet future demands.

Chang said this principle -- previously unknown in Taiwan -- was comprehensively discussed at the MOEA re-evaluation committee meetings. "We are happy that the discussions have had an impact on energy policymakers, who once put up a stubborn resistance to renewable resources of energy," Chang told the Taipei Times.