Local fishing industry representatives on Wednesday voiced their opposition to plans for an offshore wind farm off the northern coastline, saying the project’s site overlaps with a fishing zone.
Proposed by Equis Energy Taiwan, a subsidiary of the Singapore-based Equis Private Ltd, the power plant is to be located in the sea off New Taipei City’s Tamsui (淡水) and Sanjhih (三芝) districts.
The zone is one of the 36 locations that the Ministry of Economic Affairs identified as suitable for offshore wind-turbine construction in 2015.
Photo: Lee Ya-wen, Taipei Times
However, fishermen attending the town hall meeting that Equis Energy called in a Tamsui-area community center opposed the plan, saying the proposed site for the wind farm is within an important area for fishing.
The area has already been encroached on by other interests, including a freight harbor supplying a coal-fired power plant in Linkou District (林口) and the Port of Taipei in Tamsui, Fishermen’s Association secretary-general Wu Yung-kuan (吳永寬) said.
The sea off Sanjhih is one of the last fisheries left to local fishermen and the construction of the Equis wind farm could put more than 1,300 sampan-style fishing boats out of business, Wu said.
As sampan-type vessels lack the range to operate further from the coastline, building turbines in the area will economically ruin the families that work with these boats, Wu said.
“We get that ‘green’ energy is good, but if we fishermen lose our core fisheries, we lose our livelihoods,” Wu said.
Equis Energy representatives said the corporation is in the process of drafting an environmental impact study and will broadly consult the opinions of all parties.
Equis fully intends to comply with the laws and regulations regarding rightful compensation to fishermen, they said.
After the meeting, Equis Energy representative Hu Ken-ti (胡根地) said offshore wind farms are important to the nation’s industrial and energy-supply transition, adding that success would require time and public support.
The area designated for offshore wind farm construction, which is between 1km and 4km off the coast of Sanjhih, has a surface area of 54.6km2 and its depth varies from 40m to 80m, the company said.
The facility’s power cable to the distribution substation in Shalun Village (沙崙) is to have an undersea length of 4km and an overland length of 1.4km, Hu said.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS