Taiwan has adopted an energy policy of accumulation of sources instead of a transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources, the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance said yesterday, citing last year’s World Nuclear Industry Status Report.
Ambiguous statements on the phase-out of nuclear power and adjustments to energy policies paint a highly uncertain future for Taiwan’s nuclear energy development, said Paul Jobin, an Academia Sinica Institute of Sociology associate research fellow who was a contributing author to the report, which was published in September last year, with the alliance releasing a Chinese translation yesterday.
President William Lai (賴清德) “made a pledge to carry on [former president] Tsai Ing-wen’s [蔡英文] energy policy,” the report said. “Thus far, Lai’s government has been characterized by an ambivalent attitude, which can be understood as a tactical move rather than a policy change.”
Photo: Chen Chia-yi, Taipei Times
“Premier [Cho] Jung-tai [卓榮泰] ... reaffirmed that the new government has no plans to extend the [operations of the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County]... However, he has also indicated the government’s openness to ‘new nuclear power,’” it said.
Until a significant boost in 2022, the development of renewable energy in Taiwan had been slow, the report said.
“Per capita energy consumption has hardly gone down over the past decade, and per capita electricity consumption has increased by 14 percent over the decade 2013-2022 and decreased only slightly, by 1.2 percent, in 2023,” the report said, adding that the trend continued in 2023.
However, over the past two decades, electricity generated from liquefied natural gas shot up from less than 20 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2000 to 111.6TWh in 2023, making up 39.5 percent of total electricity generation, close to the 42.2 percent share of coal-fired electricity, it said.
The government’s strategy has been to “promote green energy, increase natural gas, reduce coal-fired power and achieve nuclear-free,” implying a substantial increase in natural gas consumption, which would provide half of gross electricity production by this year, the report said, citing the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
While the Lai administration is expected to follow in the preceding administration’s footsteps regarding the energy transition, national and international political tensions might make implementation more challenging, it said.
Another contributing author weighed in on Taiwan’s potential use of small modular reactors (SMRs) — advanced nuclear reactors, typically with a power capacity of up to 300 megawatts.
M.V. Ramana, Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, told the Central News Agency that the greatest issues with developing SMRs in Taiwan are risk factors and overhead costs.
If Taiwanese industry considered the development of SMRs, or other nuclear power technologies, to solve power demand issues due to the rise of artificial intelligence, it would delay the implementation of a renewable policy, Ramana said.
The high costs of SMRs and the time required to develop them do not translate into economic benefits, he said.
The alliance said that Taiwan’s energy structure needs to be adjusted to reduce its dependence on imported fossil fuels and achieve energy self-sufficiency.
Taiwan’s nuclear energy development faces political and economic challenges, so balancing the non-nuclear homeland policy and energy security needs to be resolved, it said.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS