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| Crude prices push Taiwan's DPP to reconsider nuclear-free policy |
| News Archive - Environmental, New & Alternative Energy - April news | |
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Singapore (Platts)--28Apr2006 In May 2000 Chen won the island-state's presidential election on a platform calling for promotion of environmental-friendly policies including an end to pursuit of nuclear energy on the island. To that end, only five months after taking office, Chen summarily halted work on the island's fourth nuclear power plant. Under pressure from opposition and business groups, however, work resumed on the plant in 2001 after the delay had cost an estimated $2.2 billion. But a number of factors have given the DPP pause, causing the party to re-examine its nuclear-free target. Foremost, Taiwan remains wholly lacking in domestic oil reserves and completely dependent on imports. Amid the drumbeat of ever rising global crude prices, costs to Taiwan consumers and business are likewise rising. Taiwan's two refiners, Chinese Petroleum Corp and Formosa Petrochemical Corp., raised products prices across the board April 17-18. But with state-run CPC having already lost an estimated $154 million in Q1, those higher prices did not appear likely to come down anytime soon. State-run Taiwan Power will also likely raise power prices, administration officials said recently through state media. Moreover, with the Chen administration's efforts to adhere to the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear power generation is looking more like "green energy" by the day. On Wednesday, Taiwan Vice-President Annette Lu told the DPP Central Standing Committee that the party should review its anti-nuclear policy given growing recognition of nuclear power as a "green energy," according to a report by Taiwan's state-run Central News Service. Though building a nuclear-free energy infrastructure for the island has been a cornerstone of the DPP platform, "we will have to face up to the problem [of possible energy shortage] sooner or later [and] we need to get more experts to study the issue across the board," she said. |
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