The public should avoid using hot-and-cold-water dispensers, to save electricity and improve the quality of drinking water, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) and environmentalists said yesterday.
Holding a report by the National Science Council on the results of its National Science and Technology Program on Energy, Tien said the report showed that there are about 5.48 million water dispensers in use nationwide, consuming about 3.147 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity each year.
The number is equal to about 6.79 percent of the residential and commercial sectors’ total annual electricity consumption and is also equal to about one-third of the electricity supplied annually by a nuclear reactor, she added.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
Green Consumers’ Foundation chairman Jay Fang (方儉) said water dispensers consume a lot of electricity because they have to continuously provide both boiling hot and cold water, and according to the foundations experiment, a water dispenser consumes about 1.6 kWh of electricity per day.
In contrast, electric kettles use a large amount of electricity only for the few minutes while they heat the water, but can keep the water warm for a long period of time without consuming electricity. This is safer and saves energy by only using about 0.09 kWh to boil a liter of water, Fang said.
“In addition, water that is repeatedly boiled in water dispensers may cause the accumulation of harmful substances, such as heavy metals,” he said.
Fang added that it is difficult to clean a water dispenser’s pipes and water container, so the water quality may be worse than the quality of water from kettles, which can be washed easily after use.
“Most Taiwanese are taught the importance of increasing income and reducing expenditure as they grow up. However, the government is stubbornly trying to only increase the supply of electricity, which will never meet the fast-growing demand if reducing power consumption is not considered,” Nuclear-Free Homeland Alliance executive director Lee Cho-han (李卓翰) said.
Green Party Taiwan member Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) said when Germany evaluated the scenario of supplying 100 percent of its electricity needs from renewable sources by 2050, it assumed a reduction in final energy consumption of 58 percent in the household, industrial, trade, commerce and services sectors.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift