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Government unveils plans to boost food and energy security

The government yesterday set itself a series of short-term goals aimed at ensuring reliable supplies of energy and food.

Energy security is the cornerstone of economic development, while food security is an important issue to be addressed in light of commodity price fluctuations caused by surging oil prices, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said at the weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday.

Liu said that energy policy would take center stage in his administration, as Taiwan lacked natural resources and imported more than 99 percent of its energy.

Under the energy security proposal, the government vowed to reduce the ratio of imported energy from 99.32 percent last year to 92.2 percent by 2025, and to cut the energy supply ratio from 61.5 percent to 49.7 percent over the same period.

Bureau of Energy Director-General Yeh Huey-ching (葉惠青) outlined measures to achieve the goal at a press conference following the meeting.

The measures include moves to step up the development of renewable energy sources such as solar power, hydrogen energy, ocean energy, biofuels and geothermal energy, as well as increasing nuclear power production and enhancing cooperation with international or­ganizations and China on oil and gas exploration.

Yeh did not provide details of potential overseas energy exploration projects.

The government will work toward raising the ratio of low-carbon energy sources from the current 40 percent to 55 percent in 2025, which would help reduce the nation’s oil dependence ratio from 51 percent to 34 percent by 2025, Yeh said.

Saying that Taiwan ranked third in the world in terms of the installation of solar water-heating systems per unit area, after Israel and Cyprus, Yeh said the government wished to maintain its leading position.

Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄), also present at the press conference, said the purpose of the food security proposal was to increase the security inventory from 300,000 tonnes of brown rice to 400,000 tonnes.

That amount of rice can support Taiwan’s population for four months, long enough for farmers to harvest a crop of rice, Chen said.

To maintain rice inventory levels, the government will prohibit food dealers from exporting rice for less than US$1,200 per tonne.

“But we hope that they target only countries that can afford to purchase rice at high prices, such as Japan. That way, we can reserve medium to low-priced rice for the nation,” the minister said.

Chen said that the government would encourage farmers to plant rice in more than 60,000 hectares of fallow paddies, or 27 percent of the nation’s fallow fields.
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