National Science Council (NSC) officials said yesterday that Taiwan could benefit from building a science-based industrial park developing new energy technologies, saying Germany's example illustrates the feasibility of doing so.
The New Energy International Symposium 2001 in Taipei ended yesterday. As the conference ended, many government departments, including the NSC and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), praised renewable energy for its contribution to sustainable development.
NSC Vice Chairman Wu Maw-kuen (吳茂昆) said at the symposium that the council remains very supportive of research projects on diverse topics relating to new energy technologies, such as high-performance batteries, solar cells, fuel cells and wind turbines.
Due to the higher per-kilowatt cost of generating renewable energy, however, and the many bureaucratic and technological difficulties affecting its development in Taiwan, the government should build a special zone to show its determination to promote renewable energy sources, Wu said.
Wu said that the problems of offering renewable energy producers access to the energy grid and privatizing distribution could more easily be worked out in the context of a science park.
"It would not hurt Taiwan to learn from Germany's success in which an industrial park was built to develop solar-energy technologies," Wu said.
Wu said that the council is taking the German experience very seriously.
On Sunday, Wolfgang Jung, manager of the solar-energy project at the Gelsenkirchen Science Park in Germany, described to the symposium his experiences with the development of the solar power industry at the park, which was built in 1995.
Jung said that the science park was originally conceived during an economic crisis affecting the coal, iron and steel sectors that hit Gelsenkirchen and its neighboring communities exceptionally hard.
"The main goal was to create new business and employment in a modern industrial sector and to improve the image of the whole region in order to attract investment capital and skilled labor -- not only in the energy sector," Jung said.
Environmental officials yesterday expressed their support for projects promoting renewable energy.
EPA head Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said that Taiwan had to reduce its reliance on traditional fossil fuels because the burden on the environment had increased dramatically. According to Hau, between 1987 and last year, the nation's population had increased by 5 percent.
"The increase in the number of automobiles and motorcycles has been 89 percent, while that in the number of factories has been 17 percent. These consume fossil fuel and create air pollution," Hau said.
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