For the past few decades, global warming and extreme weather have posed an increasing threat to the Earth’s ecology and human civilization.
Having drawn worldwide attention to the climate crisis, the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) culminated in the Glasgow Climate Pact.
In the agreement, nearly 200 countries committed to cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
In the opening speech of the “Sustainability: Solutions for Our Earth” forum on Earth Day, April 22, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said: “Most countries around the world are talking about achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and Taiwan is actively preparing to take steps toward this goal.”
With the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, National Tsing Hua University and the Chang Chun Group have since 2014 invested NT$700 million (US$25.28 million) to advance the research and innovation needed to achieve net-zero emissions.
Under the supervision of program director and chemical engineering professor Jang Shi-Shang (鄭西顯), this cooperation of academia and industry on green technologies is focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to cut emissions, recycle carbon emissions and produce acetic acid. The team presented their research and findings at a ministry event on Wednesday last week.
Reducing carbon emissions, net-zero emissions, carbon capture and carbon taxes are the latest and hottest technologies and talking points within the industry. These technologies will play a vital role in the economic development of regions around the world.
As a result, countries are dedicating time and effort to developing necessary technologies and establishing a regulatory framework.
It is a race against time for existing and future generations — and for the millions of species on Earth.
British entrepreneur and environmentalist Dale Vince founded the venture Skydiamond. Inspired by a concept “taken from the sky,” it took the company five years of research and development to perfect the process of using solar and wind power to turn atmospheric carbon into eco-friendly diamonds.
Elliot Berger wrote a song titled Diamond Sky, with the lyrics: “Moving with the wind / We are free falling now...” The incredible thing is that the name of the song could become a reality.
The Taiwan-based Yuen Foong Yu Paper Manufacturing Group has been focused on green production. Company founder Ho Chuan (何壽川) was quoted as saying the following at a forum on net-zero emissions and sustainability: “If we could develop products that make urine and feces waste a thing of the past, then the money would roll in.”
It was a colorful way of expressing the concept of zero-waste emisssions, an aspiration that all of the companies committed to environmental responsibility are striving to realize.
Whether the goal is zero-impact sky diamonds or net-zero pee and poo, they are technologies based on a circular economy. Only by recycling emissions such as carbon dioxide can we introduce new values and create a sustainable future.
By working hard to create a greener future, we have shown that ethics and economics are of equal importance. Let us work shoulder to shoulder and strive for a future with a sky full of diamonds.
Chen Sinn-wen is professor of chemical engineering and senior vice president of National Tsing Hua University.
Translated by Rita Wang
Criticisms of corruption, a poorly managed bureaucracy and uninformed, unprincipled or unaccomplished policy in China are often met with harsh punishments. Many protesters in the “blank paper movement,” for example, have been disappeared by the authorities. Meanwhile, the WHO has asked China to provide data on its COVID-19 situation, with the Chinese government choosing to disseminate propaganda instead. The first amendment of the US Constitution, written in 1791, prohibits the US government from abridging the freedom of speech, press, assembly, petition, or religion. More than 200 years later, China, the world’s second-largest economy, still lacks the freedoms of speech and the press,
As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) constantly strives to rewrite the Taiwan narrative, it is important to regularly update and correct the stereotypes that the PRC tries to foist on Taiwan and the world. A primary stereotype is that Taiwan has always been a part of China and its corollary that Taiwan has been a part of China since time immemorial. Both are false. Taiwan has always been a part of the vast Austronesian empire, which stretched from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island in the east and from Taiwan in the north to New Zealand in the south. That
I first visited Taiwan in 1985, when I was deputed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to start a dialogue with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). I spent three days talking to officials, the end result being the signing of an agreement where the Republic of China (ROC) recognized the right to self-determination of Tibetans. According to official KMT records in Nanking, Tibet never paid taxes to the ROC government. In 1997, the Dalai Lama made his first ever visit to Taiwan on the invitation of then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Lee took the bold step of opening Taiwan’s doors to
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the pride of the nation, has recently become a villain to residents of Tainan’s Annan District (安南). In 2017, TSMC announced plans to build the world’s first 3-nanometer fab in Anding District (安定). While the project was once welcomed by residents of Tainan, it has since become a source of controversy. The new fab requires a huge amount of electricity to operate. To meet TSMC’s surging electricity demand, plans are under way to construct a 1.2 gigawatt gas power station near a residential area in Annan District. More than 10,000 Annan residents have signed a petition
RSS