Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: koika/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS demonstrated in Kaohsiung against plans for the Nanzih Science Park earlier this month.
In particular, the Nanzih Science Park will consume as much electricity as is currently used by Kaohsiung, which may be up to 11.2 billion kWh of electricity per year. Much of this electricity will be consumed by Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing giant TSMC.
It is believed that in the future, TSMC may consume more than 10% of Taiwan’s overall energy supply. It is already the case that semiconductor manufacturing consumes up to 20% of Taiwan’s water supply, resulting in a need for water rationing during periods of droughts, increasingly a concern due to climate change, resulting in fewer typhoons hitting Taiwan each year.
Although state-run power utility Taipower will assume the burden of providing such power, environmental groups have criticized that there has been a lack of promises about if green energy will be used to provide these power needs. To this extent, the Nanzih Science Park is on the former oil refinery run by CPC that was shut down in 2015, and constructing a science park there goes against previous government promises to turn the site into a park. The Hsinta Power Plant, which is already under stress, will be used to meet such power needs.
Indeed, it is already the case that science parks–which consume enormous amounts of electricity and water–are announced by politicians as white elephant projects. Such projects are announced for the sake of stimulating development, as well as creating high-tech. But this sometimes does not take into account whether such projects are truly necessary for local areas. Failures in local planning also frequently do not take into account Taiwan’s needs and available facilities as a whole.
This is not the only time that science parks in southern Taiwan have been criticized by environmentalists in recent memory. Earlier this month, activists were successful in convincing the Tainan city government to withdraw more than 900 hectares of land that would have been used for projects, including the development of a science park.
The science park was to be built on the Shalun Farm, which was owned by the Taiwan Sugar Corporation. Original development farms would have turned the south of the farm into a science park and the north into an industrial area.
The designation of the land for development was changed at the end of 2024, prompting fears that the conversion of farmland for industrial use was imminent. In particular, this would have threatened the habitat of 360 species, including 35 protected species, that had been found in the area. The most attention has gone to the fact that the Shalun Farm contains the highest density of the protected barn owl in Taiwan, with a little over 40 acres in the farm serving as its habitat, but the area as a whole has significant biodiversity.
Environmentalists criticized that the Shalun Farm was chosen for development, when there is much other land in Tainan that could be used. It is thought that, as land owned by Taiwan Sugar, the Shalun Farm was considered an easy area to rezone.
Despite the government backing down from plans to develop the Shalun Farm, the National Science and Technology Council’s proposal for the science park can still proceed through other channels. Environmentalists believe that, if the area passes an environmental impact assessment (EIA), development could still continue. It is rare for any EIA not to be approved, as environmentalists have criticized the lack of inclusion of information about biodiversity in the process.
Still, with regard to the Nanzih Science Park in Kaohsiung, one notes that there has been a relative lack of attention to the amount of electricity consumed by the semiconductor industry to date. There has been more discussion of the semiconductor industry’s consumption of significant amounts of water, potentially at the expense of farmers who also need water for their crops. It is to be seen if controversy about the Nanzih Science Park leads to more discussion of this issue.