Vision ＼ Sustainable Power

A modern and convenient life has great demand for electricity. Everyone likes to enjoy convenient electricity, but they also worry about air pollution caused by thermal power generation. Nuclear power generation has safety concerns, and nuclear waste has nowhere to be placed. Taipower spokesman, Tsao-Hua Hsu, gave us a briefing and answered questions in response to these energy issues of concern to everyone. The key points he explained for us as follows:

Listening to Mr. Hsu’s briefing

In the referendum on November 24, 2018, three of the proposals passed were related to Taipower, namely “Anti-air pollution”, “Anti-ShanAo power plant” and “Pronuclear”. It is a great challenge for Taipower to reduce the power generation of thermal power plants year by year by reducing the average power consumption by at least 1% per year from the first point of referendum. Hydropower must build dams to block water, which will have an impact on the ecological environment. Wind power and solar power are unstable due to climate impact. Although wind and solar energy can complement each other, the current power generation is still not enough as the base load power.
Taipower has taken the initiative to carry out “friendly residual load” on the issue of air pollution at present. Once Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) issues a red light for the next day's air quality forecast (AQI>150), after assessing the safety of the power supply, in accordance with the order recommended by EPA, the thermal power plant in the upper winds will perform the load reduction to avoid further deterioration of air quality. In fact, air pollution is not completely due to the thermal power plant: Although the chimney pollution of coal-fired power plants is large, the chimney is high enough to reduce the impact. On the contrary, the emissions of steam locomotives on the road are small, but the impact on the ground is large. In Taiwan's domestic air pollution, the power industry accounts for 4.5% to 9.9%, while trucks and cars account for 17.7 to 24.2%. In fact, transportation is the key to pollution.
Natural gas of thermal power generation is less polluting than coal, but fuel costs are higher and transportation is harder. Taiwan's natural gas stock can only burn for 10 to 14 days. The government plans to generate 50% of natural gas, 30% of coal, and 20% of renewable energy in the future, but the cost of electricity generation will be different. The advantage of the nuclear power plant is that the safety stock is large. Its fuel can be used for 18 months at a time, and the price of raw materials fluctuates less.
The power generation process of nuclear power generation does not have much pollution, but nuclear waste disposal is a big problem, and people have doubts about nuclear energy safety. Many people used a lot of nuclear power to generate electricity in the past, but now they have to face the challenge of nuclear waste disposal. In order not to affect future generations, no matter nuclear power generation is required or not, Taipower will be responsible for dealing with nuclear waste.

Taipower will pragmatically deal with the disposal of nuclear waste (provided by Taipower)

To be honest, any power generation has an influence about the environment and the cost. Energy development is not a “true or false” question but a “multiple choice” question. Economic, safety, and eco-friendliness must be balanced. Each type of power generation has its own advantages and disadvantages. Taiwan still relies heavily on thermal power generation. However, the biggest problem with thermal power generation is air pollution. Everyone wants to breathe fresh air and use electricity easily. Therefore, we must make trade-offs to reach an agreement.

Hand drawing

After Mr. Hsu’s introduction, we completely have to consider if it is clean or not, safe or not, enough with power or not, and pricy or not during the use of electricity. It is just the beginning of offshore wind power. The restart of Nuclear Power Plant Fourth is also really difficult recently. Last but not the least, the choice we can make at this stage is to save power.

Hand drawing