President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said Taiwan must continue to use natural gas and other energy resources to meet the nation’s power requirements, saying renewable energy had limitations in a visit to a Penghu County wind farm.
The county established 14 wind power turbines at Jhongtun Village (中屯) and Husi Township (湖西) to generate wind power. State-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said the two power stations could generate 10,000 watts, accounting for about one-quarter of the island’s energy demand.
Ma yesterday inspected the power station at Jhongtun Village and discussed energy issues with a group of students in a local forum. While lauding the county as the best location to generate wind power in Asia thanks to strong winds in the area, Ma said renewable energy cannot fully replace natural gas and other energy sources.
“Renewable energy has its limitations. Natural gas and other fuels are still necessary to provide baseload power and meet peak demand when the wind is not strong enough,” he told the forum held at Makong High School.
Ma said the development of renewable energy is a global trend, and his administration has aimed to diversify the nation’s energy supply.
The government passed the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條例) in 2009 to develop renewable energy, including the establishment of wind power stations and solar power panels around the nation, he said.
Ma’s comments came amid demands for the government to suspend the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮). Former Democratic Progressive Party chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday reiterated calls for Ma to suspend the construction of the power plant immediately to respond to public demand for a a nuclear-free homeland.
When inspecting the wind power station in Penghu, Ma repeated that building a nuclear-free homeland is a goal of the Basic Environment Act (環境基本法), and that the government is pursuing this goal, while keeping electricity prices at an acceptable level and not disrupting power supplies.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS