Taiwan’s cities are experiencing serious air pollution, largely because 35 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated from coal. Faced with a wave of public protest, several coal-fired power stations have responded by cutting their outputs.
This year’s autumn is unusually hot and the Central Weather Bureau has said that temperatures have hit a 70-year high.
Warmer weather means more use of air conditioning. If the base-load electricity supply from coal-fired power plants is reduced under such conditions, it might lead to more power outages.
This situation calls for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to temporarily drop its call for a non-nuclear homeland and restart nuclear power plants, which provide base-load power without causing air pollution, killing two birds with one stone by resolving the environmental and electricity supply problems.
As an economy grows, power demand also grows. If coal-fired generation is reduced from current levels and we scrap nuclear plants, which provide base-load power without polluting the air, it will be bad not only for the environment, but also for the stability of electricity supply.
This is especially true considering that nuclear power is generated cleanly and cheaply and does not require maintaining emergency stocks of fuel.
Pending an environmental impact assessment, the site for the nation’s third liquefied natural gas terminal has yet to be decided. The DPP’s nuclear-free homeland plan aims to generate 50 percent of electricity at gas-fired power plants within the coming eight years. Given the delay, this will be hard to achieve.
Without an ample supply of electricity, the measures that Premier William Lai (賴清德) has announced in response to the “five industrial shortages” — labor, skilled professionals, electricity, water and land — will merely be empty words.
For example, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co plans to build a 3-nanometer chip plant in Tainan, which would boost its electricity demand by 21 gigawatt-hours, or 85 percent, within the next 10 years. If electricity supply develops along current lines, TSMC will pack up and leave Taiwan.
It took 18 years to build the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) at a cost of NT$283.8 billion (US$9.45 billion at the current exchange rate). Three years ago, construction was halted under the government’s nuclear-free homeland policy, and Taiwan Power Co has had to spend NT$3.4 billion per year to keep the plant in mothballs. That is a big waste of taxpayers’ money.
The power plant’s installed capacity is 2.7 gigawatts (GW). If it were to start operations with a utilization rate of 90 percent and operate throughout the year for a total of 7,880 hours, it would generate 21.276 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, which equals 8 percent of Taiwan’s total power generation of 264.114TWh last year.
Based on Taiwan’s electricity emission factor for last year of 0.529kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour, generating that amount of electricity from the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant would cut emissions by 11.3 million tonnes, which is 4.4 percent of the total 258.17 million tonnes of emissions that Taiwan produced last year.
The nations’s four nuclear power plants, with their total capacity of 7.844GW, could generate 61.811TWh per year, or 23.4 percent of all electricity, and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 32.8 million tonnes, or 12.7 percent of the total.
The DPP should consider suspending its nuclear-free homeland policy, which is bad for both economic development and environmental protection.
Lu Shyi-min is a retired energy policy researcher at the Industrial Technology Research Institute’s Green Energy and Environment Laboratories.
Translated by Julian Clegg
There will be a new presidential administration in the United States in January 2025. It will be important for the Lai (賴清德) administration and America’s next administration to get on the same page quickly and visibly in respective efforts to bolster Taiwan’s security, economic vitality, and dignity and respect on the world stage. One key measure for doing so will be whether Washington and Taipei can coalesce around a common narrative for moving US-Taiwan relations forward. In recent years, Washington and Taipei have leaned into fear as a motivator for coordinated action. For a time, both sides publicly reinforced each other’s
Recently, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) published three of my articles on the US presidential election, which is to be held on Nov. 5. I would like to share my perspective on the intense and stalemated presidential election with the people of Taiwan, as well as Taiwanese and Chinese Americans in the US. The current consensus of both major US political parties is to counter China and protect Taiwan. However, I do not trust former US president Donald Trump. He has questioned the US’ commitment to defending Taiwan and explicitly stated the significant challenges involved in doing so. “Trump believes
The government is considering building a semiconductor cluster in Europe, specifically in the Czech Republic, to support Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) new fab in Dresden, Germany, and to help local companies explore new business opportunities there. Europe wants to ensure the security of its semiconductor sector, but a lack of comprehensive supply chains there could pose significant risks to semiconductor clusters. The Czech government is aggressively seeking to build its own semiconductor industry and showing strong interest in collaborating with Taiwanese companies. Executive Yuan Secretary-General Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on Friday said that Taiwan is optimistic about building a semiconductor cluster in
Embroiled in multiple scandals, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Thursday announced that he would apply for a three-month leave of absence from his role as party leader, creating uncertainty about the future of the TPP and the “new politics” that he had promised to bring. Shortly after his announcement, Ko’s home and office were searched and he was questioned by prosecutors over his suspected involvement in a corruption case related to a real-estate development project. He was arrested early Saturday morning after he refused to be questioned at night and attempted to leave the prosecutors’ office. In
RSS