In November last year, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) expressed his agreement with ideas put forward by the Crazy About Green Power Alliance and said that the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) could supply people who want “green electricity” with energy from renewable resources. Environmentalists are nice people who love organic food and always carry their own shopping bags and eating utensils, but the real need for green electricity in Taiwan comes not from green-minded individuals, but from the electronics industry. If Taiwan’s electronics manufacturing sector, which produces US$70 billion of goods each year, cannot get green electricity, it will become uncompetitive over the next few years.
One of Taiwan’s most pressing problems is its over-reliance on coal to fire its power stations. If the government goes on promoting green energy as feebly as it currently does, then the electronics sector that Taiwan has spent decades fostering will fizzle out. Even if restrictions on green electricity are relaxed straight away, it will still not be possible within the foreseeable future to reduce the international competition that our electronics industry faces over its high carbon emissions.
In line with what Ma said in November, the ministry’s Bureau of Energy has held three symposiums about green electricity. The Taiwanese electronics industry’s carbon emissions factor is about 50 percent more than those of its counterparts in countries like Japan, South Korea and Singapore. Taiwan’s electronics manufacturers reckon that they are better at saving energy than these overseas competitors, but they do much worse in terms of the carbon emissions from the electricity they use, so they lose out badly in the overall score.
Manufacturers attending the series of symposiums on renewable energy sources have expressed great interest in buying green electricity. However, when they heard about the Bureau of Energy’s plan to greatly and unreasonably inflate the price of green electricity, they could only shake their heads and sigh in disappointment.
Some of them said they had thought the government could cut carbon emissions by promoting nuclear energy, but that since the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11 last year, and coupled with the fact that Taiwan’s Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮) New Taipei City (新北市) remains unfinished after 15 years under construction, they no longer have any faith in nuclear power.
The electronics sector is going to be a victim of the policy followed by the government and the state-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower), of prioritizing nuclear energy and sidelining green electricity. At the beginning of this year, the EU started levying a carbon tax on aircraft flying international routes, a move that has provoked a strong backlash from US and Chinese airlines.
There is an inevitable trend among the world’s main industrialized countries toward levying cross-border carbon taxes aimed at protecting their own manufacturing industries and providing more job opportunities. These countries’ strategy is to impose non-tariff trade barriers in the name of environmental protection and all links in the global supply chain are beginning to feel the pressure.
Many Taiwanese consumer electronics manufacturers, such as Acer and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, are already aware that this pressure will throw them into crisis before very long. These electronics makers have figured out that saving energy and cutting carbon emissions is an important way for them to stay competitive. It has suddenly dawned on them that while they have done their utmost to cut their energy consumption, their carbon emissions are still as high as ever, and that this is because Taipower’s carbon emissions are higher than those of other countries’ power suppliers.
Seemingly unaware of the hardships that manufacturers face, the Bureau of Energy has for reasons known only to itself imposed greater restrictions on green electricity as well as quite unreasonably raising its price. The bureau excludes hydroelectricity from the category of green electricity, even though it is Taiwan’s biggest renewable energy source. This is completely at odds with the usual formula that other countries use for calculating green electricity output.
The Bureau of Energy deceives the public by saying that if it were to separate green electricity from all the rest, it would increase the carbon emissions count for other kinds of electricity. In reality, all forms of green electricity generated in Taiwan last year amounted to just nine megawatt-hours, a mere 0.003 percent of the total generation of 247,000 gigawatt-hours. This tiny figure could hardly make any noticeable reduction in emissions for Taiwan’s electric power generation. Besides, even if all Taiwan’s green electricity was provided solely to electronics manufacturers, it would power them for less than an hour.
It is hard to imagine what the Bureau of Energy and the Taiwan Research Institute, which is supposed to be making plans for green electricity, have been planning and researching all these years. All it proves is that the government has failed to learn any lesson from the series of energy crises that have occurred. Saving energy and cutting carbon emissions are still no more than slogans.
The government still believes in unlimited growth and an unlimited supply of electric power. It prioritizes nuclear power and pays scant attention to green energy. The MOEA appointed Taipower’s Power Research Institute to carry out a research project on analyzing and planning future power supply and demand. The institute’s report on the project lays the government’s priorities out in black and white.
“As well as giving priority to developing renewable energy resources in line with policy, we will also comply with policy in giving priority to planning to maintain an appropriate ratio of gas-fired electricity generation,” it says.
“Given that there are no plans to add further nuclear reactors apart from the Longmen [Fourth] Nuclear Power Plant, the future gap in electricity provision must be filled by coal-fired generation. It is estimated that the total installed capacity of coal-fired generating units will grow from 17,830 megawatts in 2010 to 31,527 megawatts, or 42 percent of national total installed capacity, by 2029,” it says.
To put it simply, the plan will lead to unlimited growth in Taiwan’s carbon emissions, which will end up strangling our country’s high-tech manufacturing industry.
The solution to this problem is really quite simple. Under pressure from abroad, the market demand for green electricity is far greater than the available supply. All that needs to be done is to link up businesses that generate green electricity with manufacturers who need to use it, so that the sellers and buyers can negotiate a price. Energy consumers would also pay Taipower for the cost of transmission and distribution.
It is hard to understand why the Bureau of Energy has kept on fussing and fretting, organizing one symposium after another, and yet still can’t get to the root of the problem. It only reaffirms the impression that the Ma administration is not competent enough to run the country.
Jay Fang is chairman of the Green Consumers’ Foundation.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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