Taiwan is lagging behind other countries in terms of generating clean energy and carbon-saving applications, Nobel laureate Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) said yesterday.
“Compared with other countries, we have not made enough efforts in this aspect,” Lee told reporters when asked to comment on Taiwan’s development of clean energy and carbon-saving practices.
For example, Lee said, Taiwanese usually set their air-conditioner temperature too low in summer, causing power consumption to increase greatly during that season.
He also suggested that the government promote hybrid electric vehicles, which have been widely adopted in Japan as part of efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Lee, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, made the remarks on the opening day of the Taiwan Symposium on Carbon Dioxide Capture, Storage and Utilization. The event ends today.
During his keynote speech, Lee said there are now 6.8 billion people on Earth, consuming 1.4 earths’ worth of resources per year.
“We have too many people consuming too many resources. It’s time for us to wake up and accept the fact that our world is over-developed,” Lee said, adding that the world should find alternative ways to develop, such as by utilizing solar power.
Lin Li-fu (林立夫), project manager of the Clean Coal Master Project under the National Science Council, said that Taiwan’s annual carbon dioxide emissions per capita is about 11.5 tonnes, which is roughly the 20th-highest amount per capita in the world.
“Taiwan is inevitably facing growing international pressure to reduce its carbon footprint in the future,” Lin said at the symposium.
Lin suggested that the government work together with Taiwanese companies promote the commercialization of clean energy and invest more in the research of next-generation technology to produce clean energy.
The international symposium is being held in Taipei for the first time. It offers a platform for the sharing of expertise on clean coal-technology development, organizers said.
About 250 academics, experts and government officials from eight countries are participating in the event, which is being organized by the Clean Coal Master Project and the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research.
The organizers hope that the event will help fine-tune Taiwan’s plans for promoting demonstration projects on carbon capture and storage, as well as establishing industry clusters in the field, with the aim of developing and applying the clean coal technology on a larger scale in Taiwan.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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