With enough political will to foster a two-punch strategy that encourages energy conservation and provides governmental incentives to overcome environmental obstacles, Taiwan could be an eco-friendly nation, said Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Minister Winston Dang (陳重信).
"Taiwan's environmental efforts only started in recent years, but in the past decade alone we have cleaned the nation up quite a bit," Dang said in an interview with the Taipei Times last Monday, during which he spoke on Taiwan's environmental past efforts and future aspirations.
Since rivers are to land what blood vessels are to the body, the country's environmental improvement could be illustrated by how much the rivers have been cleaned up, he said.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
"In the 1970s and 1980s, Taiwan's environment suffered as its economy flourished -- rivers around the nation were nicknamed `Heilongjiang' [黑龍江, a river in China, whose name means `black dragon river'] and carried a distinct stench," he said. "But in the late 1990s, the government started making efforts to conserve our river systems."
Since the EPA started cleaning the Puzih River (
As an indicator of a sound ecosystem, Puzih River now boasts 180 species of birds, "which feed on fish in the river that cannot survive unless the water is clean," Dang said.
Asked whether he was optimistic about Taiwan's future in terms of its environmental wellbeing, Dang said that with sound central policies and the cooperation of local governments, Taiwan's increasing awareness for environmental protection could bring fruitful outcomes.
"For example, compared with the Puzih River, which received a NT$400 million [US$13 million] budget for its cleanup, NT$16.5 billion has been spent on the Tamsui River in Taipei since 1998, but the improvement has only been 20 percent," he said.
And the central environmental policies in the future should be a two-punch scheme to decrease Taiwan's reliance on coal-burning power plants while providing incentives for renewable energy (RE) technology developments, he said.
"Taiwan is too dependent on imported energy [98.24 percent], especially oil and coal," he said, adding that the over-dependence brings two negative consequences.
First, Taiwan's energy-related carbon emission is about 1 percent of the global total, ranking 22nd in the world despite the fact that the nation comprises only 0.35 percent of the world's population, he said.
Second, although Taiwan is advanced in RE technologies, the nation's dependence on RE is only 0.7 percent.
"Many of the nation's politicians lack vision in terms of environmental policies -- a fearless politician should go ahead and say, `I'm going to charge more for water and electricity from now on,'" he said. "When water and electricity are too cheap, no businesses would be willing to invest in water treatment, seawater desalinization facilities or renewable energy technologies. Users of water and electricity would also not realize the extent of the world's shortage."
In Singapore, for example, because fresh water is scarce, seawater desalinization and water treatment technologies are extremely advanced, Dang said.
"Once seawater is desalinized into fresh water, they repeatedly process it with water treatment facilities after use, but [in Taiwan], we emit waste water directly into the ocean, which is a terrible waste," he said.
Similarly, electricity rates could be increased to reflect the production costs of the Taiwan Power Company as a conservation stra-tegy, he said.
In terms of developing RE, Dang holds the view that the government should subsidize maturing innovations such as solar power, and withhold its expansion in nuclear energy, which differs from the opinion of former Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲).
On Feb. 18, Lee, who currently leads the Academia Sinica's environment and energy research committee, suggested to the government to postpone the "no-nuke homeland" concept for another 50 years, extend the licenses of existing nuclear plants and continue the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
"If the concern is to reduce greenhouse gases, then whether an increase in the nation's reliance on nuclear energy would achieve that purpose is questionable," Dang said.
Studies have shown that the process of nuclear generation may produce amounts of greenhouse gases comparable to that of coal-burning plants, Dang said "considering that uranium -- the raw metallic material for nuclear power generation -- has to be mined, refined, and enriched; that nuclear reactors and plants need to be constructed and that at the end of the uranium's usage, spent waste needs to be treated and stored."
Instead, the focus of future energy developments should be on solar and wind power, Dang said.
The EPA aims to bring Taiwan's percentage of reliance on RE from the current 0.7 percent to 3 percent in the next three to five years, Dang said, adding that interdepartmental collaboration needed to occur between the administration and other governmental sectors.
"There needs to be governmental incentives for the solar panels to stay within the country," he said. "[For example], the Ministry of Economic Affairs could take responsibility and establish pacts with manufacturers to subsidize their costs."
Biofuel from agricultural wastes may be another option, Dang said, adding that he was much inspired by his weeklong trip last month to Europe, visiting Taiwan's European collaborators on environmental protection policies and projects.
During the trip, Dang visited a town in Belgium called Beckerich, where 85 percent of the energy came from biofuel [wood chips and cow manure] and solar power.
"Petroleum is only used for transportation, which makes up the remaining 15 percent of power usage," he said. "If we were to build a model city on an offshore Taiwanese island that is completely self-sufficient in energy, in addition to wind and solar energy we might start collecting pig manure or kitchen waste, which is abundant here."
The EPA is already subsidizing Pingtung County's development of biofuel with pig farm waste water, he said.
"If successful, not only would we clean up rivers in southern Taiwan, we would transform waste into gold," he said.
During the interview Dang also clarified some of the common misconceptions the public, as well as environmental groups, may have of the EPA.
"Though we [the EPA and environmental groups] are fundamentally in pursuit of the same goals, the EPA needs to comply with environmental laws and the groups may be more on the idealistic side," he said.
"The seeming conflict between environmental groups and the EPA stem from a gross misunderstanding. The groups think that we are the decision-maker for construction plans like the Suhua Freeway. This is not true," he said. "Government departments such as the Cabinet or the Ministry of Economic Affairs strategize national developments. If the proposal imposes environmental impacts that are technically within permissible levels, by law we have to pass it. Whether the project contractors decide to go ahead with the construction is then their call."
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