Prospective Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) New Taipei City mayoral candidates should make clear their stance on whether they would issue a permit for a new Shenao Power Plant in the city’s Rueifang District (瑞芳) to burn coal, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus said yesterday.
All DPP members who are considering running for New Taipei City mayor should publicly declare their stance on the issue, KMT caucus secretary-general Lee Yen-hsiu (李彥秀) told a news conference at the Legislative Yuan.
Lee’s comments echoed remarks by New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who yesterday said that although the project last week passed an environmental impact assessment (EIA), he would not give the plant a permit to burn coal.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
As the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法) is expected to be amended in three months to stiffen the EIA system, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) should wait until then to resubmit data on the plant to see whether its emissions can stand up to the test of new environmental standards, Lee said.
She urged the ministry and Taipower not to submit compensatory data on the plant’s future operations as requested by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) following last week’s review.
KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) said that in 2010, EPA Deputy Minister Thomas Chan (詹順貴), who was working as a lawyer at the time, won a lawsuit against the government when he represented residents whose homes were torn down by the Miaoli County Government to make space for the Hsinchu Science Park expansion plan.
Chan on Wednesday said that he would not award official papers documenting the approval of the Shenao project until the Bureau of Energy clarifies its energy policy, Chen said.
This offers Chan a perfect opportunity to “right his wrong” for casting the deciding vote during the environmental review that approved the project, Chen added.
The Shenao Power Plant, built in 1957, began operations in 1960.
It was shuttered in 2007 and then demolished.
Taipower wants to build a new plant on the same site, equipped with ultra-supercritical steam generators, and commence operations in 2025.
During a radio interview on Wednesday Chan asked Taipower, the ministry and the energy bureau whether it was worth spending NT$100 billion (US$3.4 billion) to build the plant, which would boost the nation’s energy reserves by just 0.1 percent, KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) said.
Chan’s doubts have only made DPP’s energy policy to cut coal-fired power generation from 50 to 30 percent by 2025 more confusing, she said.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should explain to society how her energy policy would work, she said.
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