A seemingly unremarkable black sedan was the center of attention at yesterday's conference on the development of renewable energy.
It revved into gear surrounded by dozens of cameramen and reporters vying with each other to get the best shot.
The sedan that was the star of the conference was a flex-fuel vehicle imported from Brazil running on pure ethanol.
Brazil's government has a long-standing program to produce ethanol.
As a result, flex-fuel cars are now the mainstream in Brazil.
Winston Wong (
Wong praised the Brazilian government for their commitment to alternative fuels.
"Brazil had the foresight to start while oil was still cheap at US$10 a barrel. The program was very costly in the early days," he said.
That investment is beginning to bear fruit, however, according to Brazilian legislator Luis Piauhylino de Mello Monteiro.
Monteiro said Brazil was self-sufficient in fuel because of its ethanol-powered vehicles and was looking to ethanol exports as a moneyspinner.
In addition to recounting the Brazilian experience, Monteiro hoped to interest Taiwan in an ethanol-driven future and attract investors.
"Brazil welcomes Taiwanese investment in Brazilian ethanol production," he said.
Wong said he was confident that Taiwanese technical know-how could help lower costs of production of ethanol.
"Right now, Brazilian ethanol costs NT$4 to produce," Wong said. "But with hard work, maybe NT$3 or even NT$2.5 per liter is not an impossible goal."
Chris Toumazou, the Winston Wong Chair in Biomedical Circuits at Imperial College, London, outlined some ways in which Taiwan was well-positioned to become a leader in biofuels.
"Genetic engineering technologies can create crops with much higher yields and lower input requirements," Toumazou said. "Taiwan's technical expertise can also be useful in creating research and infrastructure which can be exported."
Taiwan's current plan to boost alternative fuel use includes compulsory recycling of used frying oil into biodiesel to begin in July and universal availability of E3 gasoline (containing three percent ethanol) starting in 2011, he said.
Daigee Shaw (
"Too much subsidization can causes inefficiencies. For instance, it takes more energy to make US corn ethanol than is contained in the ethanol once you've taken into account all the different inputs to grow the crop," he said.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
RSS