Environmental advocates yesterday rejected claims by Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) that a failure to build the proposed third liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal would mean reductions in coal use would be reversed.
During a televised presentation on Saturday defending the government’s position against a referendum asking whether the LNG terminal should be relocated from an algal reef coast in Taoyuan, Wang said that reductions in coal use in central and southern Taiwan would need to be reversed if the relocation proceeded.
Members of the Taiwan Algae Reef Reservation Alliance, Air Clean Taiwan and the Changhua Medical Alliance for Public Affairs yesterday at a joint media briefing urged people to vote “yes” on a Dec. 18 referendum to relocate the terminal.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
They said they might hold a protest in the week prior to the vote.
Pan Chong-cheng (潘忠政), who initiated the referendum question, said that the Basic Environment Act (環境基本法) introduced during the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) guaranteed that environmental concerns would be prioritized over economic, scientific and social development.
The government’s passage of the project’s environmental impact assessment proved that it was not following the spirit of the act, he said.
Pan also said that the government had falsely reported the scope of the terminal as covering only 23 hectares, when it would cover more than 900 hectares.
“The Democratic Progressive Party is not following the law, it does not respect professional evaluations and it contravenes procedural justice,” he said.
Chien Chien-wen (錢建文), a member of the Changhua Medical Alliance for Public Affairs, said that by focusing on natural gas, the government was not effectively tackling the industrial causes of poor air quality in southern Taiwan.
The nation’s electricity consumption has increased in the past several years to 1.5 times the output of a nuclear power plant, Chien said, adding that Taiwan could only tackle pollution and excessive electricity use if it utilized resources more competitively.
Air Clean Taiwan chairman Yeh Guang-perng (葉光芃) said that despite the concerns about air pollution caused by burning coal, which reportedly contributes to the deaths of 7.8 million people annually, natural gas is not a clean energy source and not a good alternative to coal.
The government has also not provided a plan for transitioning from natural gas and other energy sources, he said.
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