Electronics companies use the most power in Taiwan, but if they switched from coal to renewable energy sources, they could save 100 lives every year, Greenpeace Taiwan said yesterday.
As the nation’s semiconductor businesses gathered at the opening of the SEMICON Taiwan exhibition in Taipei, several members of the environmental group held up banners outside the exhibition hall, including one that read: “Make IT Green.”
Over the past 15 years, 51 percent of increased demand for power in Taiwan has come from the electronics industry, Greenpeace Nordic Global Air Pollution Unit senior analyst Lauri Myllyvirta later told a news conference at the organization’s branch office in Taipei.
Nearly 16.2 percent of that increased demand for power came from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), while 35.5 percent came from other electronics companies, he said.
Despite TSMC’s need for power, only 7 percent of its power came from renewable sources, while most of its electricity came from coal-fired power plants, he said.
Compared with other domestic companies, TSMC is relatively enthusiastic about going green, and it is expected to implement bolder measures to fulfill its energy needs from renewable resources instead of fossil fuels, Greenpeace Taiwan said, adding that it would forward the results of its survey to the company.
If local electronics companies got their power from renewable resources, 100 premature deaths associated with air pollution — such as respiratory, cardiovascular and lung cancers — could be avoided thanks to the reduction in air pollutants, it said.
Myllyvirta in April last year also visited Taiwan to urge the government to scrap a project to build the coal-fired Shenao Power Plant in New Taipei City, saying that there was no such thing as “clean coal” as then-premier William Lai (賴清德) claimed.
In October last year, ahead of the nine-in-one elections, Lai withdrew the project.
Last year, 38.8 percent of the nation’s electricity was generated by coal-fired power plants, 38.6 percent by natural gas power plants, 11.4 percent by nuclear power plants, 4.9 percent from renewable resources and the rest from mixed sources, according to data on the Web site of Taiwan Power Co.
The government plans to phase out nuclear power by 2025 and gradually reduce the ratio of coal-fired power.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
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