The government is accelerating efforts to develop renewable energy, mainly wind power, to guard against a sustained rise in fuel costs, government officials said yesterday.
Taiwan is an energy-dependent nation that imports 98 percent of its fuel each year.
As a result, skyrocketing prices for oil and coal have weighed on the state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower,
Taipower, the nation's sole power supplier, is now paying more than double what it paid for coal a year ago, while the possibility of an impending energy crisis appears to have prompted the government to accelerate efforts to develop homegrown energy sources.
"We hope that by 2010 renewable power will account for 10 percent of the nation's electrical capacity, up from 5.4 percent now," Wang Yunn-ming (
Wang said the Cabinet last month asked Taipower to raise its electricity purchase quota from 30,000 kilowatt per year to 600,000 kilowatt per year at a purchase price of NT$2 per kilowatt hour. The measure will mostly benefit wind-power developers, he added.
As a form of renewable and clean energy that has higher cost efficiency than other renewable power sources such as solar energy and hydraulic power, wind power has been chosen by Taipower, as well as various private companies, as a major energy source to exploit, Wang said.
"We estimate that wind power will make up 80 percent of our 10 percent renewable-energy capacity by 2010," Wang said.
Taipower has already set up four windmills in Penghu County that generate 2,400 kilowatts of electricity per year, and is establishing wind-power stations in Taipei County, Taoyuan County and Hsinchu County, which in total are expected to generate about 100,000 kilowatts of electricity per year, said Yu Sheng-hsiung (
Private companies have been showing high interest in exploiting the nation's rich wind-power resources. Last year, German power company Infra Vest Windpower Corp started to build the nation's largest wind-powered electricity plant in Chiayi County. Under the plan, the company will build 70 wind-turbine generators at the plant, which will be capable of generating 200 million kilowatts per year. The company is scheduled to launch the power plant next year. The company plans to build additional plants in Taoyuan and Changhwa.
One independent power company based in Hsinchu, called Hsin Feng (
Formosa Heavy Industries Corp (
Overall, there will be 200 wind turbines scattered along the west coast of Taiwan within five years, Yu said.
However, wind power still holds risks -- if there's no wind, there's no power.
Therefore, the government will still develop other renewable resources, such as hydraulic power, said Taipower Spokesman Lee Jiin-tyan (
Lee said that though it may cost Taipower NT$10 billion (US$294 million) to repair hydroelectric plants along the Tachia River in Taichung County that were damaged in Tropical Storm Mindulle last month, the company will not give up on that source of clean energy.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
RSS