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Symposium looks at future trends in ‘green’ technology

As a “young emerging economy,” Taiwan cannot afford to remain outside the global community in combating climate change, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday at the first sustainable green technology symposium in Taipei.

“In the past 100 years, humans have focused on rapid economic and technological expansion. However, these have brought with them environmental consequences that we must address today,” Ma told the audience.

The future of technology, he said, lies in sustainable development.

The forum was hosted by the National Taiwan University, which invited Taiwanese specialists who work both abroad or locally to discuss the trends in green technology.

Ho Chih-ming (何志明), director of the Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that 200 years ago, humans never had to think about sustainability, as the ecosystem was balanced and could sustain human activity without much change

However, as a result of population increase and modernization, human needs are now tilting the system, he said.

“As such, we can only reach sustainability with the assistance of technology. After all, I don’t think people are willing to go back to the living standards that obtained 200 years ago,” he said.

Tackling the rapid depletion of oil and coal sources through reliance on sustainable energy — including wind power, fuel cells and nuclear energy — was also discussed during the symposium.

Promising global energy alternatives includes cellulosic bioethanol, said Daniel Wang (王義翹), a professor in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“We are badly in need of oil alternatives. We are not using corn as fuel because it is economically feasible, we are using it because we need it,” Wang said, adding that while “no country in the world [could] afford using edible resource, such as corn, to make ethanol … cellulosic biomasses such as agricultural residues, trees and grass represent great opportunities as feedstock for conversion [although] many technological challenges lie ahead.”

While scientists may devise advanced technology to help us live better, humans still depend on a healthy environment for their survival, the scientists said.

“The world needs a minimum of 0.3 trillion liters of freshwater for human consumption a day. I don’t believe we can rely only on technology to process that amount,” Ho said.

“The only way we can make the system work is if we sustain a sound, natural ecosystem and combine it with artificial industrial system — in other words, we have to work with nature,” he said.
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