A proposal by 18 Academia Sinica research fellows opposing a petrochemical complex that Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Co (國光石化科技) plans to build on Changhua County coastal wetlands will be submitted to the government, its initiators said yesterday.
The academic institution’s general assembly approved the proposal on July 7.
The institution will initially refer the proposal to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Environmental Protection Administration, said Chou Chang-hung (周昌弘), head of Academia Sinica’s Life Sciences Division, and former National Science Council minister Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) — two of the proposal’s initiators.
The proposal states that to protect public health and the local ecology, as well as to realize the national policy of energy conservation and carbon reduction, the government should suspend plans for further petrochemical plants because they produce huge amounts of carbon dioxide.
Justification
It also presents three points to justify opposition to the plan.
First, conservationists have proposed establishing a public trust fund to buy the coastal wetlands near the mouth of the Jhuoshuei River to foil Kuokuang’s plan to buy the property for construction of the 4,000 hectare petrochemical complex.
Second, scientific investigations have proven that the Sixth Naphtha Cracker Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao (麥寮), which has been in operation since 1999, is a health threat to residents in six townships in the southern-central county.
Third, because the petrochemical industry is the prime culprit of global warming, the proposal calls on the government to ban further petrochemical plants so that Taiwan can reach global carbon-reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.
Chou said it was his responsibility to oppose the plant because he served as a member of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) committee for the sixth naphtha cracker project about 20 years ago and witnessed its negative impact on local residents and the environment.
Chou said he originally believed that science could resolve all pollution problems, but it was later proven that the plant was the cause of numerous cases of cancer and other illnesses.
“It is a fact beyond argument, and I am sorry I agreed to be part of the project,” Chou said.
Saying that 40 tonnes of water would be used every day if the petrochemical complex is built, Chou asked “if it is a reasonable and sustainable policy” to build petrochemical plants using taxpayers’ money and public land, when doing so adversely impacts agriculture and creates devastating pollution.
As a member of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) under the International Council for Science, Chou will hold a meeting of Taiwan’s SCOPE members later this month to discuss the Kuokuang project and publicize the controversy.
academics
Meanwhile, on the same day, university professors who launched a similar drive against the plant said they had collected about 540 signatures for a petition against it.
The academics said they would hold a press conference in coming days to explain their reasons for opposing the project and to expound on the plant’s possible negative impact.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
RSS