The Ministry of Environment has proposed to the Cabinet a NT$2.3 billion (US$70.1 million) plan to subsidize wastewater methane recycling as part of Taiwan’s quest to achieve net zero carbon emissions in 2050, it said yesterday.
The ministry told a news conference in Taipei that officials have drafted a plan to facilitate a partnership between efforts to remove methane from wastewater and emission mitigation in the energy sector, starting with paper mills.
The project would start with methane reclamation at the nation’s paper factories before moving on to include industries involved in fermentation, manufacturing, animal husbandry and the petroleum sector, officials said.
Photo: Chen Chia-yi, Taipei Times
The plan would establish 150 methane recycling wastewater treatment plants by 2032 and save an estimated 830,000 tonnes of carbon a year, they said.
The quoted budget is to fund the first four years of the plan’s implementation toward facilitating investments in net zero industries and establish platforms for developing the requisite water treatment technologies, the officials said.
Deputy Minister of Environment Yeh Jiunn-horng (葉俊宏) said one of the ministry’s priorities is to encourage the use of anaerobic methane oxidation as a substitute for aerobic-based technology in wastewater treatment.
The new technology is more energy efficient and the methane it extracts could be used to generate power, resulting in an overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
Removing methane is key to fighting climate change as the effect of the substance on warming is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide over 100 years, Yeh said.
Enterprises engaged in generating energy with reclaimed methane or other forms of methane processing would receive perks, including feed-in tariffs and carbon credits, he said.
Government data showed that biofuels generated 140 gigawatts of electricity over the past three years, with reclaimed methane from paper mills accounting for 14 gigawatts a year, the most of any biomass-based energy source, officials said.
Ministry researchers estimated that 208 businesses could apply wastewater methane recycling to generate electricity, including 131 farms, they said.
The Cheng Loong Corp paper factory in Taoyuan’s Dayuan District (大園) produces enough electricity to supply more than 3,000 households and reduces about 14,000 tonnes of carbon, production manager Chang Tzu-chieh (張子傑) said.
Anaerobic methane oxidation-based water treatment requires a comparatively high level of technical expertise to operate, making government support for the industry crucial to its adoption in the private sector, he said.
Hsiao Cheng-tsung (蕭振宗), deputy director of green energy at Yuen Foong Yu Group, said recycled methane from his corporation’s Taoyuan-based Gueishan Water Resource Recycling Center produces 5 gigawatts of electricity per year while reducing energy and material waste by 40 percent and 60 percent respectively.
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