Taiwan should not phase out nuclear energy, which is essential to the nation’s bid to boosting the share of renewable energy in its energy mix and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
The Democratic Progressive Party has turned a blind eye to the global trend of moving toward net zero emissions and is instead clinging on to natural gas, itself a fossil fuel, which now makes up 50 percent of Taiwan’s energy mix, Ko said on a social media.
This problem can be remedied by greatly boosting the percentage of renewables among Taiwan’s energy sources and pushing back the time line to phase out nuclear energy, Ko said.
Photo: Tsai Yun-jung, Taipei Times
He recommended “extending the service life” of the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County’s Ma-anshan (馬鞍山), which is set to be fully decommissioned in May 2025, and that of the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里), even though the plant was decommissioned in March.
He also called for security concerns surrounding the shuttered Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) to be addressed as soon as possible.
Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Taiwan that same year ordered a safety inspection of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs in July 2014 announced that the safety inspection report deemed the nuclear power plant to be “safe.”
However, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) in August that year cited 23 “inconclusive” items and nine items that still require the submission of follow-up information by the state-run utility Taiwan Power Co.
The issues prevented the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant from receiving the permit for the use of fuel rods and led the AEC to declare that the plant had failed to meet safety standards on numerous occasions over the years.
In April 2014, then-premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) ordered that it be shuttered amid strong public opposition to its construction.
In 2021, a referendum on its unsealing and relaunching failed to pass after 3.8 million people voted for and 4.26 million voted against the proposal.
Ko recently proposed a goal to increase the share of renewable energy sources from the current level of 8 to 9 percent to 40 percent by 2030, but has yet to propose a detailed energy mix.
Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 is a global trend, and many businesses have joined the RE100 initiative to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, Ko said.
Many Taiwanese businesses hope to jump on the bandwagon and have been trying to purchase renewable energy, only to be told that there is none available, he said.
This highlights Taiwan’s continual shortage of renewable energy, which has disadvantaged many companies, he said.
This has not only led to a large volume of carbon emissions, but also poses a risk to the nation’s energy supply due to fluctuating prices on a global level, Ko added.
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