Resilience to natural disasters in utilities infrastructure has been built up in large part thanks to the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, which ensured that the east coast still had running water and electricity after Wednesday’s massive earthquake, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said yesterday.
The temblor was the strongest in Taiwan in 25 years, “but the nation’s electricity grid ran normally, without any large-scale outages,” DPP Legislator Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
Although localized outages were reported, the grid remained functioning, Lin said.
Photo: CNA
He credited the performance to the infrastructure program, which was launched in 2017 by then-premier Lin Chuan (林全) during President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) first term.
The government provided dedicated funding to build a new generation of infrastructure, including green energy projects, water projects to enhance resilience against climate change, railway projects, digital infrastructure, projects to ensure food safety and other important projects to boost the nation’s resilience, he said.
“The program has improved the nation’s basic infrastructure, allowing every household to have running water and electricity, which our citizens are now taking for granted for their daily necessities,” he said.
Lin said that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party tried to stop the program.
For example, NT$193.9 billion (US$6.05 billion) of government funding was required for water projects, including NT$10 billion to build conduits between dams in southern Taiwan to transfer water to regions to ease water shortages, Lin said.
“I would like to ask those legislators who tried to block funding for the projects if they feel any different today, or if they just take everything for granted,” he said.
Earlier, DPP Legislator Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) said that the government’s strategy to transition to renewable energy helped the nation avoid a large-scale power outage after Wednesday’s quake, unlike the Sept. 21, 1999, earthquake centered in Nantou County’s Jiji Township (集集).
“One of the main reasons electricity remained stable after this week’s earthquake was due to a large increase of solar energy farms across the nation, which ramped up generation right after the temblor to help cover overloading at some coal-fired power plants,” Hung said in an online post.
“In the past, electricity from dams was stored to be released at noon during peak demand. Now, peak times can be covered by solar farms, keeping electricity from dams to release at other times,” he said. “This also helped to cover the power supply when coal-fired plants were disrupted by the earthquake knocking down power lines.”
“Taiwan now has a new power system that is able to make quick adjustments to sudden disruptions, so we have much better equipment in place to respond to emergency situations,” Hung said, adding that these included new energy systems based on gas and water power storage.
NATIONAL SECURITY: Authorities are working to confirm the identities of the military personnel involved and investigating possible illegal conduct and regulatory violations Authorities are probing possible national security implications after Kinmen police and immigration officers on Sunday found a Chinese woman allegedly posing as a tourist while engaging in prostitution involving more than 10 military personnel. The woman, surnamed Chen (陳), has since been deported, authorities said, adding that investigators are still working to confirm the identities of those implicated, as the records only listed code names and aliases. The case stemmed from a report received by the Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday last week from the Jinhu Precinct of the Kinmen County Police Bureau. On Sunday, police, along with the National Immigration
GLOBALGIVING: ‘ Caving to external pressure is not acceptable for an organization that has cultivated justice reform and human rights for 30 years,’ one NGO said A slew of non-government organizations (NGOs) have withdrawn from the GlobalGiving fundraising platform after it announced it would use “Chinese Taipei” instead of “Taiwan” from next month. The Taiwan Good Rice Association wrote on Facebook on Friday that it was informed on April 28 via a teleconference call of the change, which was made because the platform wanted to operate in China. Taiwan Good Rice is to terminate all cooperative relationships with GlobalGiving in response to the platform’s “unilateral and non-negotiable” decision to remove references to Taiwan, the NGO said. “Taiwan is in the official name of Taiwan Good Rice Association and the
HEAVY WEATHER: Typhoon Jangmi is due to crash straight into the Ryukyus as airlines look to shift flights to larger aircraft or cancel flights to Okinawa entirely Taiwan’s international air carriers announced flight adjustments over the weekend as Typhoon Jangmi is forecast to hit the Ryukyu Islands today and tomorrow. The Central Weather Administration (CWA) upgraded Jangmi from a tropical storm to a typhoon at 8am yesterday, with the eye located 580km south of Naha city. It was moving north at 19kph. Today, China Airlines’ CI-120, CI-121, CI-122 and CI-123 flights between Taoyuan and Naha, Okinawa, have been canceled as well as CI-132 and CI-133 between Kaohsiung and Naha. EVA Air’s BR-112, BR-113, BR-186 and BR-185 flights between Taoyuan and Naha are also canceled. Low-cost carrier Tigerair Taiwan canceled IT-230,
MULTIPRONGED APPROACH: China has sought to pressure Palau across a number of fronts, but the island nation has staunchly resisted overtures to ditch Taiwan Palau has been firm in backing Taiwan despite Chinese pressure that uses tourism economics, cyberattacks and criminal infiltration as tools to threaten the Pacific ally into renouncing its recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state. The Presidential Office yesterday announced that Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) would visit Palau from Saturday to Wednesday next week at the invitation of Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr. Whipps in April said in an interview that China had outspokenly asked Palau to “denounce Taiwan.” “And we have said: ‘We have no enemies, but nobody tells us who our friends are,’” he said. Whipps has told reporters multiple times
RSS