Since the DPP came to power in May last year, a fierce debate has raged on energy policy, focusing on the controversial Fourth Nuclear Power Plant. A leading foreign expert said on Friday that it is time the government woke up to the reality that other solutions are needed. This wake-up call seems to be necessary despite demonstrations, international conferences on renewable energy and transnational lobbying over the course of the last year.
"The old energy formula in Taiwan is not working," John Byrne told the Taipei Times during an interview.
"Most of the world has been abandoning nuclear energy since the late 1970s. There has been no significant research done on nuclear power in over twenty years," he said.
"Taiwan has great potential to develop the technology for manufacturing fuel cells or solar panels," Byrne said, stressing that in these economically hard times, Taiwan can no longer afford to "ignore the voices of experts in the fields of economics and energy."
For Byrne, a professor of energy and environmental policy at the University of Delaware, it was hard to imagine that energy policy in Taiwan could reach such a stalemate.
Last August, Byrne led a group of four US energy experts sponsored by the US-based W Alton Jones Foundation to lobby the Taiwan government to recognize that there are many cost-effective options in the energy sector.
Their suggestion that Taiwan should adopt these options based on new technology, which involves sources of renewable energy, including the wind, sun, waves, and others, has apparently gone unheard by the government, according to some experts.
Taiwan's recent reversal of its original decision to halt the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (
New direction needed
Byrne has come back to Taipei to attend an international conference on new energy held by the Legislative Yuan that starts today.
Byrne said that with many Taiwanese being thrown into unemployment by the economic downturn, the Taiwan government should not continue to ignore the voices of economics and energy experts.
Taking nuclear energy as an example, Byrne said that buying an expensive, old-fashioned technology would make it impossible for Taiwan to be competitive in the 21st century.
He said that the expansion of markets in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan had now become a life-or-death issue for the nuclear industry in developed countries.
"You might argue that markets in Eastern Europe are too. But they obviously have no money to invest in such an industry," Byrne explained.
"Most of the world has been abandoning nuclear energy since the late 1970s. There has been no significant research done on nuclear power in over twenty years," Byrne said.
He said his experience shows that many countries had shifted their directions toward improving energy-efficiency, promoting energy conservation and developing technology relating to renewable energy rather than building more nuclear power plants.
An advisor to the Korea Energy Economics Institute, China's State Environmental Protection Agency, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the India Renewable Energy Development Agency, Byrne said that Taiwan can be competitive if it uses its advantages in the mature technology of semiconductor manufacturing.
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