A planned biogas energy plant in Hualien County’s Yuli Township (玉里) could simultaneously tackle energy and environmental concerns once it becomes operational, the county’s Environmental Protection Bureau said on Tuesday last week.
The plant, subsidized by the Environmental Protection Administration, would be the first biogas energy plant in Taiwan and could serve as a blueprint for other such plants, the bureau said.
Once completed, it would be capable of generating up to 800,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year from biomass, such as animal waste, it said.
Photo: CNA
The Hualien County Government said it plans to collect animal waste to be used at the plant from five farms in Yuli, two in Ruisui Township (瑞穗) and one in Guangfu Township (光復).
The waste would undergo anaerobic fermentation to produce biogas, which would then be used to generate electricity, the county said, adding that the plant would be connected to Taiwan Power Co’s grid.
The government shouldered 49 percent of the project’s estimated cost of NT$85.8 million (US$3 million), the county said.
The plant is expected to go online in June and would reduce the amount of animal waste polluting river systems by 80,000 tonnes per year, it said.
The plant is being built on land provided by local hog farmer Chen Chun-chung (陳春仲), the county said.
The energy generated by the plant would be sufficient to power 250 households, the county added.
Should the plant prove effective in cutting down waste pollution, the county would build a second plant in Ruisui, it said.
Sinotech Environmental Technology Ltd engineer Huang Yen-lin (黃彥霖) said the plant would have capacity for 600m3 of biogas, adding that biogas residue could also be used as fertilizer.
Hualien County Commissioner Hsu Chen-wei (徐榛蔚) during a visit to the facility on Wednesday last week thanked the local farms for supporting the project.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater