There are no plans for an electricity rate hike even though the nation is transitioning to renewable energy, the Cabinet said yesterday as Premier William Lai (賴清德) inspected a new solar power system in Kinmen County.
There are no plans for a rate hike because the cost of renewable energy will drop dramatically with technological advances, Cabinet spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said.
The new solar power system in Kinmen is 50 percent more efficient than the one installed eight years ago and had a lower construction cost, Hsu said.
Photo: CNA
Renewable power plants have no fuel costs; the only costs are construction, operation and maintenance expenses, which are more affordable than the operational and maintenance costs of a traditional power plant, Hsu said.
While the availability of land is an issue for solar power plants, offshore wind farms can boost the nation’s “green” energy ratio, he said.
The local wind energy sector is estimated to attract up to NT$1.5 trillion (US$49.6 billion) in investment and major international wind farm developers have come to Taiwan seeking to harvest wind power in the Taiwan Strait, Hsu said.
The experiences of wind power development in Taiwan could be applied to Kinmen, he added.
Kinmen is a Cabinet-designated “low-carbon island” where efforts will be made to power the county with solar and wind energy, Lai said.
“It is not a slogan, but a program to be accomplished,” he added.
The county government has built small solar power systems across the island, and the Cabinet is to launch a program to encourage households to install rooftop solar panels to alleviate power shortages and attain the goal of phasing out nuclear power by 2025.
Kinmen should be among the first areas where an extensive solar network is constructed, Lai said.
In response to Vice President Chen Chien-jen’s (陳建仁) remark that it is possible to phase out coal power by 2050, Hsu said that Chen referred to a German estimate that could not be applied to Taiwan.
Germany’s renewable energy development is far ahead of Taiwan’s, Hsu added.
He reiterated the government’s goal of raising the share of green energy to 20 percent of the total while reducing the share of coal to 30 percent, with natural gas making up the remaining 50 percent.
The nation would use low-sulfur coal and commission ultra-supercritical power generators to reduce air pollution, Hsu added.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS