No turning back on nuclear
No matter whether you are on a train traveling along Taiwan’s western coast or flying above in an airplane, you are likely to notice the scenery outside your window.
Over the past three years, the biggest development you are likely to notice is that there is a growing number of solar panel roof installations on homes and factories and “groves” of offshore wind turbines.
Previously, it was only a handful of onshore turbines next to beaches. The renewable energy transformation is well underway.
On Sunday last week, while taking a short train ride from Kaohsiung Station to Hsin-ying Station in Tainan’s Sinying Township (新營), I saw a small school next to the railway. Heping Elementary School’s roof was covered in solar panels.
There are still many universities that have not even installed a single panel. Such a tiny school was able to do better than them.
After conducting a simple Internet search on this school, something astonishing turned up — I found that the school had installed the solar panels way back in 2008. The school was not just simply following a fad.
They were a community pioneer in transitioning to renewable energy sources.
The train continued lurching forward as it left the station. High-voltage pylons slowly came into view. The Longci ultra-high voltage substation appeared just 30 minutes into the journey.
The national March 3 power outages in 2022 started at this southern power supply hub. It is not an overstatement to say that Longci is the most important power substation in Taiwan.
The installation was Southeast Asia’s largest ultra-high voltage substation, a news report said at the time of its completion in 1981.
If we compare renewable transition to a “large power plant and large grid,” it is a long way before the nation reaches the point of having an extensive smart grid.
Fortunately, after three power outages, the government has proposed a plan to transition the power grid to a distributed “smart grid,” tying together the intermittency of renewables’ socialized characteristics.
The transition to a system of renewables also appears to be progressing.
Although the administrations of former presidents Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had a renewables platform agenda, it was all for nothing. Taiwan’s road to renewable energy transition only officially began in 2016.
There have been a few impassioned proponents of nuclear power in the past few years.
However, they are stoking the anxieties of workers and business owners.
They use simplistic logic, such as “a stop to nuclear power would mean power cuts, and power cuts mean a need for nuclear power,” to cast doubt on the importance of renewables for the nation’s energy.
The electric system includes the production, transportation, adaptation and sale of energy systems.
Electric systems specialists have long made it clear that in Taiwan, the classic example of renewables system transitions has been widespread much earlier than initially thought.
Taiwan cannot and does not possess the legal proscriptions to turn back the clock.
Conservatives who protect nuclear power are intentionally manipulating people’s fears of power outages.
This is only because there is only one way forward in their minds.
Chen Wei-chih
Taipei
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