The nation’s genetic modification technology used to enhance ethanol refining is mature and will be able to produce enough biomass energy to cope with the energy crisis, researchers said yesterday.
As the world is facing both a food and energy crisis, researchers have been developing technology for genetically modifying plants such as rice and sugar cane to reduce growing time and increase the quantity available for refining into ethanol, the researchers said.
Since the nation has advanced technology, farmers and experts, it can secure a place in the biomass market, which will be an important driver of economic growth, Winston Wong (王文洋), chairman of the board of the Grace THW Group, said at a press conference.
The organizers said that only three countries in the world — Brazil, Sweden and Thailand — use significant amounts of biofuel as an alternative energy source.
Resorting to theatrics to highlight the power generated by ethanol, a magician at the press conference made a table float in midair using a small box of biofuel.
Asked if the principal costs of biomass development were too high, Yu Su-may (余淑美), a researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology at Academia Sinica, said they were using low-cost plants, fibrous plants, rice straw and sugarcane waste in order to keep costs down. By doing so, biomass development would not overshadow the need for food production, said Yu.
The Council of Agriculture said last week that its attempts to plant biomass energy plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers had failed because of the high principal cost and that it would switch to agricultural waste and fibrous plants to produce biomass energy.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
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