State-run utility Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Japan’s Mitsubishi Group to conduct a demonstration project that involves mixing ammonia with coal to generate power at the Linkou Power Plant (林口發電廠) in New Taipei City.
The project aims to achieve 5 percent cofiring of ammonia at the coal-fired plant by 2030 before increasing the use of ammonia to 20 percent, Taipower spokesman Wu Chin-chung (吳進忠) said.
If the 5 percent ammonia cofiring target is reached, it is expected to help the power plant reduce its carbon emissions by 9,000 tonnes per year, Taipower said.
Photo: Lin Jin-hua, Taipei Times
Emissions reduction in the power sector plays an important role in Taiwan’s efforts to reach its goal of net zero emissions by 2050.
Taipower continues to promote a coal-to-gas shift at coal-fired plants — which includes burning ammonia with coal — energy storage technologies and sources of renewable energy, Taipower president Wang Yao-ting (王耀庭) said during the signing ceremony.
Toshiyuki Hashi — chief executive officer of gas power at Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Ltd, a power solutions brand — said that Taiwan and Japan face common challenges in fuel imports and development of renewable energy sources, adding that he believes through collaboration, the two countries can effectively foster and accelerate an energy transition.
Hiroki Haba, chief operating officer at Mitsubishi Corp’s Next Generation Fuels & Petroleum business division, said that the group plans to spend ¥1.2 trillion (US$8.6 billion) to develop next-generation energy technologies.
As part of that approach, Mitsubishi Corp is seeking to make the ammonia-coal cofiring technology used in the demonstration project with Taipower more cost competitive, Haba said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”