The government's policy on producing crops for energy will refocus on crops used for ethanol gasoline after efforts to grow crops for biodiesel over the past two years proved inefficient, a senior Agriculture and Food Agency (AFA) official said yesterday.
AFA Deputy Director Yu Sheng-feng (游勝鋒) said that as part of the efforts to promote the use of biomass energy, the agency planted biodiesel crops, including soybeans and sunflowers, on 1,721 hectares of fallow land in Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan counties last year.
EXPANSION
This year the cultivation of such crops was expanded to 24 counties and townships nationwide, including Taoyuan and Taipei counties, on a total of 3,334 hectares of fallow.
However, harvests were far less than expected because of inclement weather and pests, Yu said, adding that the harvests were only sufficient to fuel a fleet of vehicles used in government biomass energy programs such as the "green government vehicle" program launched in September.
SWEET POTATOES
Because of this, Yu said, efforts will turn to plants such as sweet potatoes, which are one of the main crops used in the production of bio-ethanol.
Faced with an international energy crisis as crude oil prices skyrocket, the government is betting on biofuel crops to alleviate the problem within Taiwan, the AFA said.
NOBEL LAUREATE
Meanwhile, former Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (
At a conference on national parks and forests hosted by the Construction and Planning Agency in Taipei earlier yesterday, Lee said that the country is inching forward at a snail's pace in its efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
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:
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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