Hydropower in Taiwan

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,14241,00.html

Summary

Although Taiwan is not a developing country, it relies heavily for electricity on coal-fired power plant. However, Taiwan is slowly making the switch to hydropower because the non renewable resource-coal has been used up and importing coal from other countries cost too much money. Also, as Japan facing a nuclear crisis, Taiwan is looking for an alternative seriously. Hydropower is Taiwan’s key of green future. Even though a very large hydropower plant is not going to produce any greenhouse gas, it is the best solution to solve Taiwan’s air pollution problem. Taiwan is facing a problem by using the hydropower plant. All water is collected in the dam and through the pipe flow into the hydropower plant. However, typhoons happen in Taiwan every year; the typhoons always wash so much trash into the pipe so the pipe is being blocked. Therefore, the pipe is broken because of the high pressures in the pipe. Project goal: replacing coal-fired power plants with hydro power plants Project scale: 13,000 households are now supplied with electricity generated by hydropower Project result: saving 36,000tons of carbon dioxide each year Project cost: 17,495,000 CDN

Analysis

There are some advantages to build a hydropower plant. Water is a clean and renewable resource and water cycle is an endless cycle; therefore, hydropower is considered a renewable energy. Hydropower is a very efficient way to produce electricity without producing any pollution. To build the hydropower plant is also improving the agriculture by watering the farm with plenty of water and improving the tourism by attracting people to visit the dam. However, there are some difficulties to build a hydropower plant. It costs a lot of money to build the hydropower plant and to maintain it. The ecosystem of the river will be changed; fishes and plants may become extinct. And, it is difficult to choose a place to build a hydropower plant because the raining seasons and raining locations are changing; it is difficult to choose a place that can collect all the water.

Professor's Comments

A big driver for this project seems to be the carbon trading scheme. This is an incentive based mechanism whereby clean energy projects in Taiwan are paid for by European companies. This is in line with the tradable emissions permit system we talked about in class.

What will happen if the Kyoto accord falls apart?

Very limited analysis.

4/10