Taiwan redux
TAIPEI – Travellers coming back to Manila after, say, ten years, are wont to exclaim the metropolis has not changed in their long absence: same place, same sights, constant, stagnant.
In stark contrast, Taipei – and for that matter, Taiwan – appears in a perpetual state of flux. A most pleasant discovery for this writer in the four days he and a host of other journalists spent going through the city and the island.
The gigantic pillars noted in a 2003 visit now support a four-lane elevated highway by-passing the Beitou Refuse Incineration Plant just across a river to the city suburbs.
An incineration plant so near a commercial and residential district makes the worst nightmare for some self-proclaimed environmental experts here. But Beitou has none of the fears factored in those nightmares. Not a trace of stench from the trucks that bring in the garbage to be fed to the incinerator. Not the slightest smell of burning trash. Not the merest trace of Pasudeco-like black, stinking, particle-laden smoke out of its concrete chimney: so massive that its top is rimmed by a fine-dining revolving restaurant and viewing deck from where one can look down at pockets of greens – orchards, rice paddies, vegetable patches and herbs fertilized with composted residual ash. Or one can look out far to the horizon through the smog-free skyline of the city dominated by Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building. Eat your heart out, Petronas.
Trash power
Beitou, which generates power sufficient to energize its contiguous communities, is run by the Department of Environmental Protection, Taiwan’s counterpart of Mike Defensor’s turf.
To Defensor’s utter shame though, timber licenses are unknown in Taiwan. On return from my October 2003 trip, I wrote in my Zona Libre column in The Voice:
“Green. That is the color of Taiwan. From the air, as well as on the ground. Clean. That is the order of things in Taiwan. From the streets to the squares.
New generation forests fill the hills and mountains. Rice paddies, vegetable patches, herbal gardens and orchards blanket the plains. Pristine blue rivers shine blinding bright in the sunlight. And glow in the moonlight.
Can’t help but wax romantic at Taiwan. And weep when we think of the Philippines.”
On this recent visit, Taiwan’s green has become even greener. Its clean, well, cleaner.
Green coal
Clean as coal. Oxymoronic. A contradiction in terms. A reality in Taiwan.
Co-generation plants dot both the urban areas and the countrysides of Taiwan. But the dreadful Dickensian scenario affixed to coal-fired power plants of blackened skies, acid rain and black lungs does not obtain here. Not the slightest trace of it. Not even in the imagination of the people in and around the plant sites.
A total negation of the dirty-coal-presumption is the Nan Ya complex in the Tao Yuan district of Taipei. At the core of the complex is a 57-megawatt co-generation plant which directly powers the adjacent Nan Ya High Tech and Nan Ya PC Board companies that produce highly sensitive computer components such as thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays, dynamic random access memory chips and wafers.
Dust, as well as particles from factory smoke, is known as the curse of semi-conductors and components. The two high-tech companies at Nan Ya would have long closed shop were the co-generation plant a dirty pollutant, so went the argument. The more telling argument for the plant though is Nan Ya PC Board is second in the world in its line of products. Indeed, one can’t argue with success.
And yes, Nan Ya complex is some 500 meters from the sprawling five-storey Tai Mall and lies well within a mixed industrial, commercial and residential community.
Yet another argument for clean coal is the co-generation plant powering a high-tech electronics and computer parts factory is the Hwa Ya Power Corp., 16 kilometers from Taipei.
Taiwan’s No. 1
Both the Nan Ya and Hwa Ya co-generation plants are subsidiaries of Formosa Plastics Group, the largest private enterprise in Taiwan with over 82,000 employees and investments in the United States, China and Indonesia. FPG is engaged in the whole gamut of products ranging from plastics and plasmas to PVCs, heavy industries, petrochemicals and refineries, power plants, electricity and steam, spandex and wafers, epoxy and fibers.
On 2,096 hectares of reclaimed land in Mailiao in Yunin county – some four-hour smooth ride south of Taipei – the Formosa Plastics Industrial Park with its flagship No. 6 Naphtha Cracker Project is a virtual industrial city with its own postal system.
Two power plants – thermal, with an output of 1.8 million kilowatt, and co-generation, producing 1.82 million kilowatt – provides for the power needs of the park and sells its excess electricity to the Taiwan Power Company. Aside from electricity, the co-generation plant generates steam, industrial water, ultra-pure water, nitrogen, oxygen and compressed air for use by project-related plants at the park.
A core value of the FPG is environmental protection which is manifest in the creation of the Nan Ya Environmental Engineering Center. . .
Of the total investment of US$19.2 billion at No. 6 Naphtha Project, US$3.82 billion – a cool 20 percent – is earmarked for environmental protection that subscribes to both national and international standards.
At all FPG co-generation plants, omnipresent is the chart for emission standards in advanced countries in terms of sulfur oxides (SOX) and nitrate oxides (NOX) at the unite of particles per million (PPM). For the USA, it is 600 SOX and 285 NOX; Germany and Switzerland, 140-100; New Zealand, 100-70; Taiwan, 300-250. At Formosa, it is the highest standard at 50-60.
The Philippine mean is reportedly 1000 SOX and 700 NOX.
Strictly implemented at the FPG co-generation plants is most advanced cleaning technology that includes: accurate furnace combustion design, selective catalyst reduction, installation of electrostatic precipitator, low NOX burner, flue gas desulphurisation, and closed ash and coal handling system. .
All these clean technology capped by the more advanced circulating fluidised bed type – not to mention its integrity as the Number One Company in Taiwan, the Formosa Plastics Group is investing in a very minuscule – by its Taiwan standards – 50 megawatt co-generation plant at the TIPCO complex in Mabalacat, Pampanga.
Ah, Mabalacat. Blacked-out Mabalacat. Can’t help but compare, however odiously, the town consigned – by the incompetent PELCO II – to the Dark Ages when one is regaled by the brightness of night even in the far-flung countryside of Taiwan. Even the North Luzon Expressway, for all its amenities, is still an embarrassment when compared to the expressways – not only well-paved, but also well-lighted – of Taiwan.
Power is a premium to development. Light is its symbol. (Isn’t light at the very core of Creation itself? As God Him- or Herself said?) Looking at the colourful Christmas-themed lights of Taipei 101, one can’t help but feel the bursting energy of Taiwan. And weep for one’s own benighted country.
(The author does not have any pretension at being an environmental expert. He writes only what he perceives.)
(Pampanga News, Dec. 22-28, 2005)
.
In stark contrast, Taipei – and for that matter, Taiwan – appears in a perpetual state of flux. A most pleasant discovery for this writer in the four days he and a host of other journalists spent going through the city and the island.
The gigantic pillars noted in a 2003 visit now support a four-lane elevated highway by-passing the Beitou Refuse Incineration Plant just across a river to the city suburbs.
An incineration plant so near a commercial and residential district makes the worst nightmare for some self-proclaimed environmental experts here. But Beitou has none of the fears factored in those nightmares. Not a trace of stench from the trucks that bring in the garbage to be fed to the incinerator. Not the slightest smell of burning trash. Not the merest trace of Pasudeco-like black, stinking, particle-laden smoke out of its concrete chimney: so massive that its top is rimmed by a fine-dining revolving restaurant and viewing deck from where one can look down at pockets of greens – orchards, rice paddies, vegetable patches and herbs fertilized with composted residual ash. Or one can look out far to the horizon through the smog-free skyline of the city dominated by Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building. Eat your heart out, Petronas.
Trash power
Beitou, which generates power sufficient to energize its contiguous communities, is run by the Department of Environmental Protection, Taiwan’s counterpart of Mike Defensor’s turf.
To Defensor’s utter shame though, timber licenses are unknown in Taiwan. On return from my October 2003 trip, I wrote in my Zona Libre column in The Voice:
“Green. That is the color of Taiwan. From the air, as well as on the ground. Clean. That is the order of things in Taiwan. From the streets to the squares.
New generation forests fill the hills and mountains. Rice paddies, vegetable patches, herbal gardens and orchards blanket the plains. Pristine blue rivers shine blinding bright in the sunlight. And glow in the moonlight.
Can’t help but wax romantic at Taiwan. And weep when we think of the Philippines.”
On this recent visit, Taiwan’s green has become even greener. Its clean, well, cleaner.
Green coal
Clean as coal. Oxymoronic. A contradiction in terms. A reality in Taiwan.
Co-generation plants dot both the urban areas and the countrysides of Taiwan. But the dreadful Dickensian scenario affixed to coal-fired power plants of blackened skies, acid rain and black lungs does not obtain here. Not the slightest trace of it. Not even in the imagination of the people in and around the plant sites.
A total negation of the dirty-coal-presumption is the Nan Ya complex in the Tao Yuan district of Taipei. At the core of the complex is a 57-megawatt co-generation plant which directly powers the adjacent Nan Ya High Tech and Nan Ya PC Board companies that produce highly sensitive computer components such as thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays, dynamic random access memory chips and wafers.
Dust, as well as particles from factory smoke, is known as the curse of semi-conductors and components. The two high-tech companies at Nan Ya would have long closed shop were the co-generation plant a dirty pollutant, so went the argument. The more telling argument for the plant though is Nan Ya PC Board is second in the world in its line of products. Indeed, one can’t argue with success.
And yes, Nan Ya complex is some 500 meters from the sprawling five-storey Tai Mall and lies well within a mixed industrial, commercial and residential community.
Yet another argument for clean coal is the co-generation plant powering a high-tech electronics and computer parts factory is the Hwa Ya Power Corp., 16 kilometers from Taipei.
Taiwan’s No. 1
Both the Nan Ya and Hwa Ya co-generation plants are subsidiaries of Formosa Plastics Group, the largest private enterprise in Taiwan with over 82,000 employees and investments in the United States, China and Indonesia. FPG is engaged in the whole gamut of products ranging from plastics and plasmas to PVCs, heavy industries, petrochemicals and refineries, power plants, electricity and steam, spandex and wafers, epoxy and fibers.
On 2,096 hectares of reclaimed land in Mailiao in Yunin county – some four-hour smooth ride south of Taipei – the Formosa Plastics Industrial Park with its flagship No. 6 Naphtha Cracker Project is a virtual industrial city with its own postal system.
Two power plants – thermal, with an output of 1.8 million kilowatt, and co-generation, producing 1.82 million kilowatt – provides for the power needs of the park and sells its excess electricity to the Taiwan Power Company. Aside from electricity, the co-generation plant generates steam, industrial water, ultra-pure water, nitrogen, oxygen and compressed air for use by project-related plants at the park.
A core value of the FPG is environmental protection which is manifest in the creation of the Nan Ya Environmental Engineering Center. . .
Of the total investment of US$19.2 billion at No. 6 Naphtha Project, US$3.82 billion – a cool 20 percent – is earmarked for environmental protection that subscribes to both national and international standards.
At all FPG co-generation plants, omnipresent is the chart for emission standards in advanced countries in terms of sulfur oxides (SOX) and nitrate oxides (NOX) at the unite of particles per million (PPM). For the USA, it is 600 SOX and 285 NOX; Germany and Switzerland, 140-100; New Zealand, 100-70; Taiwan, 300-250. At Formosa, it is the highest standard at 50-60.
The Philippine mean is reportedly 1000 SOX and 700 NOX.
Strictly implemented at the FPG co-generation plants is most advanced cleaning technology that includes: accurate furnace combustion design, selective catalyst reduction, installation of electrostatic precipitator, low NOX burner, flue gas desulphurisation, and closed ash and coal handling system. .
All these clean technology capped by the more advanced circulating fluidised bed type – not to mention its integrity as the Number One Company in Taiwan, the Formosa Plastics Group is investing in a very minuscule – by its Taiwan standards – 50 megawatt co-generation plant at the TIPCO complex in Mabalacat, Pampanga.
Ah, Mabalacat. Blacked-out Mabalacat. Can’t help but compare, however odiously, the town consigned – by the incompetent PELCO II – to the Dark Ages when one is regaled by the brightness of night even in the far-flung countryside of Taiwan. Even the North Luzon Expressway, for all its amenities, is still an embarrassment when compared to the expressways – not only well-paved, but also well-lighted – of Taiwan.
Power is a premium to development. Light is its symbol. (Isn’t light at the very core of Creation itself? As God Him- or Herself said?) Looking at the colourful Christmas-themed lights of Taipei 101, one can’t help but feel the bursting energy of Taiwan. And weep for one’s own benighted country.
(The author does not have any pretension at being an environmental expert. He writes only what he perceives.)
(Pampanga News, Dec. 22-28, 2005)
.
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 9:37 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home