Environmental groups yesterday urged the government to speed up progress on cutting coal-fired electricity generation, adding that it should publish a detailed road map to achieving its promise of reducing it to 30 percent of total power production by 2025.
In a public hearing at the Legislative Yuan yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators Chen Man-li (陳曼麗), Su Chih-feng (蘇治芬) and Wu Kun-yuh (吳焜裕) invited environmentalists and officials from the energy sector to address coal reduction and air pollution abatement.
About 45 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated from coal, but that will be reduced to 43 percent by 2020 and to 30 percent by 2025, Bureau of Energy Deputy Director-General Lee Chun-li (李君禮) said.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) plans to decommission two of the four coal-fired generators at the Sinda Power Plant (興達電廠) in Kaohsiung in 2023, which is ahead of the company’s original schedule, Taipower vice president Chen Chien-yi (陳建益) said.
Until 2025, Taipower will only install new coal-fired generators at the Dalin (大林) plant in Kaohsiung, and the Linkou (林口) and Shenao (深澳) plants in New Taipei City, Chen said, adding that more natural gas-powered generators would be installed.
“If there is consensus about cutting coal in society, is the utility planning to build a new plant in the north in 2025?” Green Citizens’ Action Alliance Wu Cheng-cheng (吳澄澄) asked.
Taipower would be virtually building a new plant in Shenao, given that it stopped operations there about 10 years ago, Wu said.
Even if the government promises to reduce coal-fired power from 45 percent to 30 percent, it has not proposed detailed plans to achieve the goal, Greenpeace Taiwan campaigner Lisa Tsai (蔡佩芸) said.
The coal-fired capacity at the Sinda plant should be decommissioned earlier, or residents in Kaohsiung would have to put up with the air pollution for another six years, Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan Energy and Industry Division director Tsai Hui-sun (蔡卉荀) said.
To stop highly polluting industries from further expanding, the government should not approve CPC Corp, Taiwan’s plan to expand its naphtha cracker in Kaohsiung, she said.
The government’s plan for coal reduction omits many numbers, such as pollution data for independent power plants (IPP), cogeneration plants and privately owned factory boilers, she said.
Above all, the government should present more concrete plans to reduce energy use and prevent the nation’s electricity consumption from rising further, she added.
The Executive Yuan’s Office of Energy and Carbon Reduction is working on an inventory of electricity consumption across the nation, the results of which will be published next month, office Deputy Executive Officer Lin Tze-luen (林子倫) said.
At the end of the meeting, DPP lawmakers requested that officials publish data about coal use by all utilities and IPPs, as well as their polluting emissions, within a month.
The government should also publish plans for the nation’s energy transformation after 2025 as soon as possible, the lawmakers said.
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