A coalition of environmental groups yesterday gathered in front of the Ministry of Economic Affairs building in Taipei, demanding that the ministry re-examine its one-year, NT$3 billion (US$91.37 million) energy conservation program, which they said lacks a comprehensive design and policy continuity to complement the existing measures of local governments.
The ministry in April earmarked NT$3 billion to fund a “smart city” power-saving program this fiscal year, which tasked local governments with proposing local power-saving schemes to achieve a 2 percent goal in reducing commercial power consumption.
Green Citizen’s Action Alliance deputy secretary-general Hung Shen-han (洪申翰) said the 2 percent goal was rigidly imposed without considering the differences between municipalities in their modes of energy consumption and population distribution, while achieving the 2 percent goal by April next month is a prerequisite for further energy-saving funding.
Some municipalities, due to population outflow and consequent reduced energy consumption, could achieve the 2 percent goal with hardly any effort, while a reduction of industrial power consumption and an increase in renewable energy could not be counted toward the program’s reduction goal, disqualifying industry-concentrated or “green”-energy-intensive municipalities from further funding, despite their energy-saving potentials, Hung said.
Most local governments proposed little more than a combination of outmoded energy conservation options, such as replacing appliances with energy efficient models and holding electricity reduction competitions for households, alliance chairperson Lai Wei-chieh (賴偉傑) said.
Lacking an overall understanding of local energy consumption, some local governments did not draft and pass a scheme until last month, but the program is to be concluded in a few months, preventing those governments from achieving the 2 percent goal, Lai said.
“We suspected that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration was purposefully hasty in pushing through the program, to use the program’s failure to present energy conservation as an implausible option, so it could continue with nuclear power development,” Hung said.
Hung said the program’s funding would be dramatically slashed to about NT$50 million next year, to similar levels as previous energy-saving projects, and the bloated budget this year was aimed at promoting Ma’s political achievements before he leaves office in May next year.
The groups called for the ministry to establish a long-term program with well-defined directives and consistent funding, staff local governments with energy professionals and delegate authority to local governments in drafting and executing locally appropriate energy policies.
The Bureau of Energy said that it has made continuous efforts on energy conservation, as the ministry has helped local governments organize summertime electricity reduction competitions since 2012, and this year’s program has extended the energy-saving to the whole year.
The ministry’s energy-saving goal in the short-term is to reduce energy intensity — a measure of the energy efficiency of a nation’s economy, calculated by diving GDP by energy consumption — by 20 percent this year compared with 2005 levels, which has been achieved, while the long-term goal is to achieve a 50 percent reduction in energy intensity by 2025 compared with 2005 levels, the bureau said.
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