A government program to develop solar energy has harmed farmers and threatens Taiwan’s food security, a group of academics said yesterday.
Taiwan’s land use laws have been steadily deregulated to facilitate photovoltaic construction since 2015, but there has been a steady trend away from the principle of sustainable development, the academics said in a petition, which had garnered 80 signatures.
The government must establish clear standards and procedures to select sites for solar installations to minimize the impact on farmers’ and fishers’ livelihoods, the environment and food security, the petition said.
Photo: Taipei Times file
Regulations give officials “virtual carte blanche” to declare farmland to be unsuited for agriculture, National Chung Kung University (NCKU) professor of urban planning Huang Wei-ju (黃偉茹) said.
The land is rezoned for use as solar farms with almost no factual basis, Huang said.
For example, 500 hectares designated as agriculture-only in Changhua County’s Dacheng Township (大城) was rezoned to permit photovoltaic construction, despite 89 percent of the land being intensively cultivated, she said.
Taiwan needs 132,000 to 570,000 hectares for green energy installations to achieve its 2025 target of 40 to 80 gigawatts generated from renewable sources, NCKU professor of urban planning Chao Tsu-yuan (趙子元) said.
That would require a comprehensive rethinking of national land use plans, a process that the government has not gone through yet, Chao said.
Failure to address controversies arising from the selection of solar energy sites would complicate implementation of zoning plans over the next two years, National Chengchi University (NCCU) assistant professor of land economy Tai Hsiu-hsiung (戴秀雄) said.
Green energy zones should be established under the Electricity Act (電業法) and Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條例), not extemporized by executive order, Tai said.
The effects of renewable energy installations should be more extensively examined in environmental impact assessments, he said.
It would be a mistake for Taiwan to fixate on net zero carbon emissions at the expense of other considerations, or reduce the challenge of mitigating climate change to merely installing renewable energy installations, National Taipei University professor of urban planning Liao Kuei-hsien (廖桂賢) said.
Rushing to build solar and wind farms without adequate planning would lead to a host of long-term problems, including loss of biodiversity and food production, Liao said.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
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