The Chinese-language business monthly Commonwealth Magazine (天下雜誌), which also follows environmental issues, questioned in January last year’s issue whether a reduction of coal-fired power generation would help resolve air pollution.
The chief culprit behind the nation’s air pollution is not the energy sector, one article said, citing research by National Yunlin University of Science and Technology environmental engineering professor Chang Ken-Hui (張艮輝) and two other experts.
In another article, National Cheng Kung University environmental engineering professor Tsai Jiun-horng (蔡俊鴻) explained why coal-fired power plants do not have as great an effect on air quality as generally thought.
The cited research, originally published by state-sponsored China Engineering Consultants Inc (CECI, 中華顧問工程) in volume 109 of the Chinese-language Journal of CECI Engineering Technology (中華技術), addressed the challenges of reducing PM2.5 emissions and how to further improve air quality.
Chang and the study’s two coauthors selected eight emission sources — diesel-powered vehicles, gasoline-powered vehicles and scooters, dust from construction sites and roads, the power industry, the petrochemical industry, the steel industry, the cement industry and open burning — and ran a simulation. According to the report, diesel-powered vehicles accounted for 11.2 percent of the emissions impact, followed by construction sites and roads at 9.1 percent, and gasoline-powered vehicles and scooters at 8.7 percent.
The power, petrochemical, steel and cement industries accounted for 4.1 percent, 4.6 percent, 4.4 percent and 1.2 percent respectively, while open burning made up 2.7 percent. The results showed that PM2.5 emissions in Taiwan primarily come from vehicles, which emit five times as much as the power industry.
On Nov. 9, 2017, the Chinese-language Commercial Times (工商時報) published a column cowritten by Lee Shen-yi (李伸一), currently vice chairman of the Contemporary Taiwan Development Foundation, and Wen Chi-pang (溫啟邦), an honorary research fellow at the National Health Research Institutes, which said that burning coal is not the primary culprit behind the nation’s air pollution, because even when the Taichung Power Plant reduces its power output by 40 percent, the PM2.5 concentration in the city only improves by 1.5 percent.
According to other EPA data, vehicles and scooters contribute 36 percent of PM2.5 emissions, followed by 27 percent attributed to transboundary pollutants.
The industrial sector — including coal-fired power generation, the petrochemical industry and the steel industry — accounts for 25 percent of total airborne particle emissions, while other sectors, such as the open burning of agricultural waste and household garbage, account for 12 percent.
However, the above is not common knowledge. The public believes that coal-fired plants are the biggest polluters, with the largest offender being the Taichung Power Plant. The general opinion is that if that plant were to cease operations, air pollution in central Taiwan would be a thing of the past.
This idea — symbolized by the plant’s towering chimney stacks — is so firmly rooted in the public imagination, even among local heads of government, that action is being taken to demand carbon emission reductions in their administrative areas and even that they become carbon-free.
The emissions standards governing the Taichung Power Plant are 60 parts per million (ppm) for sulfur dioxide, whereas Keelung’s oil-fired Hsieh-ho (協和) power plant emits as high as 250ppm, due to the fact that when the Hsieh-ho plant was built, insufficient space was left for the installation of emissions-control equipment.
In an interview with Commonwealth Magazine this year, a spokesperson for Taiwan Power Co (台灣電力) said that even though the Hsieh-ho plant only generates one-eighth of the annual power provided by the Taichung Power Plant, it emits similar amounts of pollution.
Yet, the residents of Keelung, New Taipei City and Taipei hardly ever complain about the Hsieh-ho plant, possibly due to the lack of statistics or physical symbols such as towering chimney stacks spewing white clouds of smoke.
Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) has reportedly set aside about NT$10 billion (US$331 million) to reduce the amount of white smoke coming out of its plants. No longer will the sky around the Mailiao Township (麥寮) naphtha cracker be heady with white steam.
However, not seeing the pollution does not mean it does not exist — emissions would actually increase. Improvements only make sense if they tackle the nub of the problem.
Of course, the monitoring of coal-fired plants and the reduction of their emissions needs to continue, but there are other sources emitting even greater amounts of pollution that need to be addressed.
All must play their part — the central government, local governments and individuals — in reducing PM2.5 emissions. This can be done by introducing green energy policies; by getting old, large diesel vehicles off the road; and by reducing the amount of unnecessary incineration, such as the mass burning of spirit money.
The public must also keep an eye on political parties that boycott or eviscerate these policies, or attempt to extract political gain from the process, as they have been guilty of that in the past.
The problem of the Taichung Power Plant loomed large in last year’s nine-in-one elections and affected the election results in Taichung. For the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections, the public in Changhua and Yunlin counties are protesting that power is being generated at the expense of the public, due to carcinogenic pollutants. Is the Taichung Power Plant really the villain of this piece? The scientific evidence must be examined.
Lin Chung-ping is employed in the manufacturing industry.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming and Paul Cooper
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