Legislators yesterday urged the use of environmentally friendly biofuels and said the government should plan energy policies that encourage their development, production and usage.
A `Biofuel' is any fuel that derives from organisms or their metabolic byproducts, such as manure from cows. It is a renewable energy source, unlike other natural resources such as petroleum, coal and nuclear power.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Cheng Kuo-chung (鄭國忠), who led a public hearing at the Legislative Yuan with two other DPP legislators, said that with oil prices rising fast, Taiwan should consider using its agricultural resources to develop biofuels.
Cheng said biofuels like ethanol produced from sugar cane are being used as automotive fuel in Brazil and ethanol produced from corn is being used as a gasoline additive in the US.
The use and production of biodiesel, another biofuel, is increasing rapidly worldwide with fuel stations beginning to make biodiesel available to consumers, and a growing number of transport fleets using it as an additive in their fuel, Cheng said.
However, academics at the hearing raised questions about the feasibility of increasing the production of biodiesel and ethanol fuel in Taiwan.
Wang Yu-wen (
Another problem is that Taiwan has insufficient land available to grow sufficient volumes of crops such as castor beans or corn which could be used to produce biofuels, Wang said. As result Taiwan was likely to continue to be reliant on diesel imports.
However, government subsidies should be used to promote the use of biofuels, because their development is still crucial, he said.
Legislators raised the question of whether the WTO would allow the government to subsidize crops needed for biofuels.
Kao Cheng-chi (高成際), deputy director of the development and planning division for Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC), said that the WTO had no reason to be opposed to subsidizing such crops since biofuels are environmentally friendly.
Biodiesel for example, is biodegradable and non-toxic, producing significantly less pollution than petroleum-based diesel when burned.
Cheng said the government currently plans to have 1 percent of biodiesel additive in regular diesel by 2008 and 2 percent by 2010.
Chen Yi-ling (
The bureau plans to begin offering biodiesel in several gas stations nationwide next year.
There are also plans to introduce biodiesel buses and garbage trucks to encourage the use of biofuels, Chen said.
However, the use of ethanol fuel is still being discussed due to safety concerns, she added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching