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The will to develop
green energy
By Winston Dang 陳重信
Former Atomic Energy Council chairman Ouyang Min-shen (歐陽敏盛) said in a recent
article that he would not oppose nuclear power just because he was a Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) member any more than he would defend nuclear power just
because he was a nuclear engineer. He said his concern was with nuclear safety
and that without the right environment and sufficient land, there could be no
green energy development. Some of his opinions are worthy of further discussion.
First, whether Ouyang is a member of the DPP is not important. A nuclear-free
environment is intended to give our citizens a life free from fear of threats
from nuclear energy. That is an ideal based on environmental and social justice.
The Basic Environmental Act (環境基本法) states: “The government shall establish
plans to gradually achieve the goal of becoming a nuclear-free country. The
government shall also strengthen nuclear safety management and control,
protection against radiation and the management of radioactive materials and
monitoring of environmental radiation to safeguard the public from the dangers
of radiation exposure.”
Protecting the lives and safety of the public is the government’s
responsibility. As a DPP member and appointed official, Ouyang should carry out
his duties in accordance with the law and identify with the call for a
nuclear-free environment in the DPP’s party platform. That has nothing to do
with his professional background.
However, at a question-and-answer session in the legislature on Oct 21, 2004,
Ouyang said: “The ideal of a nuclear-free environment is something that only
happens in books. It is not practical and it would be impossible for Taiwan to
completely abandon nuclear power.”
It is interesting to see Ouyang take the view that he “does not oppose” nuclear
energy when serving as chairman of the council, which is supposed to be neutral.
When a politician espousing a nuclear-free environment undertakes to implement
such an environment in accordance with the law, it is not only a matter of
following the law, it is also a promise to fulfill one’s responsibilities.
As for his comment that “without the right environment and sufficient land,
there could be no development of green energy,” this is something that can be
resolved.
For example, in January 2008, the Council of Agriculture promoted a “green sea
plan,” which called for the planting of trees on 20,000 hectares of land, which
is about as large as 800 parks the size of Taipei City’s Da-an Forest Park. If
20,000 hectares were used to generate electricity instead of planting trees,
electricity equivalent to the amount produced by five Fourth Nuclear Power
Plants could be produced. So how can one say that Taiwan does not have the
necessary environment needed to develop green energy?
In February 2008, I led a delegation to Beckerich, a small town in Luxembourg
with a population of 2,000. Residents mix cow and horse excrement and sawdust
and then use anerobic digestion to produce biogas. Houses also have solar
installations that provide all the energy they need for heating and lighting
during winter. This town managed to boost its energy self-sufficiency rate to 87
percent and in the process, solved its cow excrement problem and turned
Beckerich into a tourist attraction.
Many small advanced nations, such as Denmark and Luxembourg, have used renewable
energy sources to replace nuclear energy. In 1985, the Danish parliament passed
a resolution banning the construction of nuclear power plants. Connie Hedegaard,
who was the Danish minister for climate and energy from 2007 to 2009, focused on
promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy. Denmark raised the price of
gasoline, levied taxes on carbon dioxide emission and took energy-saving
policies to the household level. The result was that energy consumption remained
unchanged and unemployment fell below 2 percent. By 2007, 16 to 18 percent of
Denmark’s energy came from solar power and wind energy.
Denmark has 25 million pigs and uses electricity from recycled waste water from
pig farming and compost to solve the problem of waste-water pollution. Taiwan
only has 6 million to 7 million pigs, so there is no reason why we cannot do the
same. Liukuaicuo (六塊厝) in Pingtung County has initiated an experimental plan to
generate electricity from biogas produced from pig excrement as well as a
project to generate hydroelectricity.
An eco-friendly science park in Liuying Township (柳營), Greater Tainan, is in the
initial stages of planning the use of a solar power generator with a Dual-Axis
Tracker System to show how this method can increase power generation efficiency
by 11 percent. In another eco-friendly science park in Greater Kaohsiung’s
Gangshan Township (岡山), private companies are replacing natural gas and gasoline
for cars with hydrogen from pure water.
The mayor of Beckerich spent 17 years to make the town 87 percent energy
self-sufficient. The question of whether the right environment exists for
developing green energy is a matter of political determination and has nothing
to do with whether the natural environment will permit it.
Winston Dang is a former Environmental Protection Administration minister.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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