Many institutions have been crunching data about energy and the environment, as the government says it wants to rid Taiwan of nuclear energy by 2025.
As that would mean about a 20 percent reduction in generation capacity, the government has said that renewable energy and natural gas-generated power must reach 20 percent and 50 percent respectively to successfully transform the power grid.
Although the reduction of nuclear power-generated energy by 50 percent has been on schedule since the current government took over, it has also resulted in a tight energy supply and heavy air pollution.
Locations for offshore wind and natural gas terminals — on which the government originally pinned most of its hopes — have still not been approved, and the capacity of solar generation lags far behind expectations.
Coal-fired power, which has always provided a stable source of cheap energy, has become a necessity, but it is bad timing to expand that source just as cancer and other health issues caused by burning coal are being confirmed, which is reflected in public complaints about air pollution.
A few days ago, Premier William Lai (賴清德) for the first time changed his stance on the nuclear ban, saying instead that nuclear power would be the last option.
Opponents of nuclear power have remained uncharacteristically quiet in response to this trial balloon. It seems that all that is needed for a return to nuclear power is an explanation that everyone finds acceptable.
However, people must not forget that the road back to nuclear power remains strewn with challenges, such as the issue of nuclear waste storage.
Even without power shortages, air pollution is an urgent problem that the government must solve. Coal-fired power plants are blamed for causing pollution, but cars, scooters and other mobile pollution sources are a major cause of deteriorating urban air quality and pose a direct threat to public health.
According to the US-based Electric Power Research Institute’s Environmental Assessment of a Full Electric Transportation Portfolio, pollution from electric transportation is far lower than that from traditional vehicles.
As long as power plants cooperate, emissions can be further reduced in the next two or three decades through the use of cleaner technology.
An electric car has almost no direct emissions. Instead, emissions come from power plants, where pollution is monitored. As the power required to operate an electric vehicle comes from the entire region, pollution is “distributed” to areas outside of densely populated urban areas.
However, when the power for an electric vehicle comes from a coal-fired power plant, it could instead cause an increase in sulfur oxide emissions. Solving this issue requires that efforts be directed toward cleaning up power generation to eliminate pollution and coal-fired power generation at the same time.
If electric vehicles become popular in Taiwan, it would not only be possible to reduce urban air pollution, but could also make the nation’s power generation more distributed, which would be beneficial to the “democratization” of electric power — a necessary component of the energy transformation process.
The first step toward electrifying transportation is to build the required infrastructure. California’s experience has shown that when businesses install chargers in their parking lots, their employees are 20 times more willing to buy an electric car.
The first thing that the government could do on the way to eliminating gasoline-powered vehicles could be to transform the nation’s buses, for which Taiwan already has a good technological foundation.
Hua Jian is an associate professor of marine engineering at National Taiwan Ocean University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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