The Executive Yuan yesterday said emissions from coal-fired power plants have decreased by 77 percent over the past decade, in response to clean air activists’ demands for a more ambitious coal retirement scheme.
Activists yesterday gathered in front of the Executive Yuan in Taipei to call for ensuring the right to clean air by accelerating the retirement of coal power.
Massive power consumption by the high-tech sector should not be used as an excuse to delay the retirement, they said.
Photo: CNA
They urged the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government to propose a draft energy efficiency act by May 20, its 10th consecutive year in power, in line with its election pledge of reducing the nation’s coal power usage to 27 percent of total power use by last year.
Air Clean Taiwan president Yeh Guang-perng (葉光芃) urged the Cabinet to align its energy policy with Germany’s Energy Efficiency Act and consider Delta Electronics Inc’s achievement in reducing the company’s power consumption by 50 percent over a five-year span from 2009 to 2014.
“The best energy is not green energy, but saving energy,” he said.
Taiwan Academy of Ecology director Yang Kuo-cheng (楊國禎) said high-tech giants like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and Nvidia Corp are RE100 companies committed to a future of 100 percent renewable energy use.
TSMC pledged to achieve net zero by 2040, while Nvidia in 2023 sourced up to 85 percent of its global power consumption from renewable energy, he said.
The government should not use developing semiconductors or artificial intelligence as an excuse to delay coal retirement, Yang said, urging the government to increase major power-consuming companies’ compulsory installed capacity of green power to 30 percent from 10 percent of its actual power use.
Pingtung Environmental Protection Union president Hung Hui-hsiang (洪輝祥) said the DPP government should fulfil its pledge of reducing coal power generation in Taiwan to 27 percent by last year to improve air pollution, especially as lung cancer has topped the list of the nation’s 10 most common cancers.
The growth rate of lung cancer among residents in southern Taiwan — particularly in Kaohsiung and Pingtung County — is more than 15 times higher than those living in northern Taiwan due to the more serious air pollution in the south, he said, citing research by National Taiwan University public health professor Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權).
Public health specialist Shang Chun-hsi (尚君璽), who has lived in Taichung for 14 years, said most air pollutant-emitting factories are in central or southern Taiwan, leading to more local young people being diagnosed with lung cancer in the past few years.
People can choose vegetables over meat or buy drinking water to replace unsafe tap water, but air — which is essential to breathing and life — cannot be replaced, she said.
The government should establish a coal retirement timeline that properly reflects a corresponding increase in gas power, she said.
Natural gas is used as a bridging energy to replace coal in the nation’s transition to green energy.
In related developments, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) yesterday at a post-Cabinet meeting news conference said air pollutant emissions from coal power plants have dropped by up to 77 percent over the past decade, from 56,000 tonnes in 2016 to 13,000 tonnes last year.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) in a statement last week also said that the first gas-fired power generation unit has been constructed at Taichung Power Plant and is being tested.
Taipower would build five more units at the Taichung plant to replace 10 coal-fired power generation units, with the goal of lowering the plant’s annual air pollutant emissions to 5,000 tonnes by 2035, from 7,500 tonnes last year, it said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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