Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Minister Winston Dang (陳重信) yesterday encouraged automobile owners to convert their vehicles to a greener fuel alternative, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), saying it was a much cheaper option.
Compared with petroleum, LPG costs less, offers comparable highway mileages (10km per liter), and is more environmentally friendly, Dang told reporters during the EPA's budget review in the Legislative Yuan.
Flipping open the trunk of his government vehicle, he showed reporters how a modifier can be installed to make a vehicle run on a dual system of LPG and gasoline.
INSTALLATION COSTS
Dang said that although the installation cost NT$46,000, car owners could save on lower fuel bills as well as with government incentives, such as coupons that subsidize NT$30 on every 20 liters.
LPG currently costs NT$17 per liter, a little more than half the price of gasoline.
"Since my government vehicle was converted a year-and-a-half ago, I have been saving NT$3,000 to NT$4,000 on gas every month," he said, adding that a typical vehicle could make a round-trip from Taipei to Kaohsiung on a 45-liter LPG tank.
LPG, also known as autogas, is either primarily propane, butane, or a mixture of both. It is often considered a greener fuel than petroleum because vehicle using it produce up to 20 percent less carbon dioxide.
GOVERNMENT VEHICLES
Dang opened the discussion in August on converting all government vehicles to LPG.
Responding to Legislator Yang Li-hung's (
Currently 12,000 vehicles in Taiwan are running on the dual system.
"The EPA is working on building more LPG refueling stations to improve the convenience and feasibility for car owners to make the shift," Dang said. "There are 20 LPG refueling stations being built around the country right now."
He especially urged the nation's 98,000 taxi drivers to make the switch, saying that the reduced exhaust emissions would be substantial and that drivers could save up to NT$10,000 on fuel every month.
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
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
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