Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Heeheemalu/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS have called on the government to mandate that liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals do not produce sulfur dioxide by burning LNG.
In particular, environmental groups have suggested that state-run power utility Taipower may be falsifying statistics, in that while the company recently stated that its gas turbines produced close to no sulfur dioxide exhaust, Taipower’s company reports show 242.7 tonnes of sulfur dioxide exhaust annually. As such, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association has called for a legal provision requiring that LNG terminals do not produce sulfur dioxide. More broadly, environmental groups have criticized environmental assessments in Taiwan for restricting air pollution based on permits rather than the quantity of emissions.
LNG terminals have become an increasingly contentious environmental issue in Taiwan in past years. Namely, the Taiwanese government has a priority on increasing Taiwan’s LNG supply, in order to ensure stable power supply in the event of a Chinese invasion or blockade.
Taiwan lacks energy resources, as a result of which it needs to import most of its energy. Yet this proves a danger for Taiwan if energy supplies are cut off by the Chinese military during wartime scenarios. The government currently aims to expand Taiwan’s natural gas reserves to 27 days by 2027, with a security stock of 14 days.
Such contention began after a 2018 referendum on an LNG terminal that was being constructed off the coast of Datan, Taoyuan. Local environmentalists criticized the project as threatening a thousands-year-old coral reef and, in this sense, threatening the area’s biodiversity, and called for a referendum on the issue.
Photo credit: lienyuan lee/WikiCommons/CC BY 3.0
Though the LNG terminal had originally been proposed when the KMT was in power, the KMT later threw its weight behind the referendum. As such, this led to accusations that environmentalists had been co-opted by the KMT.
This proves one of the challenges of the present, in that many energy projects that environmentalists have long opposed are now backed by the current DPP government in pursuing Taiwan’s security needs. When the LNG terminal had originally been proposed under the Ma administration, the DPP had actually opposed the terminal. The issue of energy supply for Taiwan and the potential environmental impact of energy facilities proves one of the host of issues that the DPP and KMT have traded positions on, between when in and out of power.
Indeed, late last year, plans by the Taiwanese government to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal in Kaohsiung have led to pushback from local residents. Groups such as the Taiwan Association of Healthy Parents have criticized the LNG terminal as potentially impacting air safety, while the Government Watch Alliance has criticized the potential impact on the ocean. Some residents will need to be relocated for the project.
Calls to ban sulfur dioxide emissions were made at a review meeting by the Ministry of the Environment, pertaining to the LNG plant in Keelung as well as plans to convert Hsieh-ho Power Plant from an oil-fired facility to a natural gas facility. Criticism of the development of energy infrastructure in Keelung has been ongoing, with the government accused of being perfunctory in its environmental impact assessment. The KMT has suggested that it might push for a referendum on the issue in the past, proving another time in which the KMT has backed environmental causes for its own political agenda.
Yet with the Lai administration indicating that the DPP may be backing away from its historic position opposed to nuclear energy, this is likely to lead to further tensions between environmentalists and the DPP. The environmental movement in Taiwan has long opposed nuclear energy, given the danger of a Fukushima-style nuclear disaster given Taiwan’s frequent seismic activity. Questions have also long been raised about nuclear waste disposal. By contrast, however, the KMT has historically been a pro-nuclear party. In this sense, it is hard to know how the KMT will react to this shift in the DPP–one which is again driven by security concerns, given Taiwan’s need to maintain energy supply in wartime, in that reactors could be still used even with a blockade.