The Changhua County Government on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with offshore wind energy developers from Canada and Singapore that will see them invest NT$157 billion (US$4.9 billion) in “renewable” energy resources.
The MOU was signed by Changhua County Commissioner Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷), Canada’s Northland Power (NPI) commercial development manager Sean McDermott, and Singapore-based Yushan Energy PTE Ltd chairman Ian Hatton, and was witnessed by Industrial Development Bureau Deputy Director-General Leu Jang-hwa (呂正華).
The companies also signed a joint MOU with National Changhua University of Education vice president Chen Ming-fei (陳明飛) to forge academic exchanges.
Changhua is ideally located to become a major contributor to “renewable” energy development because of its collaboration between academia, industry and government, Wei said, adding that the companies’ development teams had been investigating prospective development areas in the county, Wei added.
“NPI and Yushan have established positive relations with the community through the Hai Long offshore wind farm project,” he said.
The Hai Long project, in collaboration with NPI, is expected to contribute about 1,200 megawatts (MW) of power. The first stage of the project is to utilize turbines between 6MW and 8MW, with an installed capacity of about 700MW, the Yushan Web site said.
Wei said that the county government has been working closely with the central government on a policy to make Taiwan nuclear power-free by 2025.
“The exploration area off Changhua coast spans 2,300 square kilometers, which is an ideal development area for the world’s leading ‘green energy’ companies,” he said, adding that the area’s projected investment potential is about NT$1 trillion, with a maximum capacity of 4 gigawatts.
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