Microgeneration

The Guardian, a British newspaper, yesterday reported:

British buildings equipped with solar, wind and other micro power equipment could generate as much electricity in a year as five nuclear power stations, a government-backed industry report showed today.

Commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Regulatory Reform (DBERR), the report says that if government chose to be as ambitious as some other countries, a combination of loans, grants and incentives could lead to nearly 10m microgeneration systems being installed by 2020.

Such a large scale switch to microrenewable energy could save 30m tonnes of CO2 – the equivalent of nearly 5% of all UK electricity.

The report estimates that there are nearly 100,000 microgeneration units already installed in Britain. Nearly 90,000 of these are solar water heaters, with limited numbers of biomass boilers, photovoltaic panels, heat pumps, fuel cells, and small-scale hydroelectric and windpower schemes.

Likewise, the vast majority of microgeneration systems installed here in Taiwan are solar water heaters. There's not the space for private wind turbines, but as photovoltaic cells become cheaper and more efficient, the government should make it easy for homeowners to set up net metering systems.

South Taiwan is very suitable: Kaohsiung gets 2,139 hours of sunshine per year; Tainan enjoys 2,649 hours. Many apartment buildings have flat roofs, and residents will likely be interested in a scheme that means, instead of paying a monthly management fee for building upkeep, they earn a few dollars every once in a while.

Millions Have Gone Missing

According to this article in the China Post, about seven million cell phones were sold in Taiwan last year, but the Environmental Protection Administration managed to collect only 2.34 million old phones between April 2006 and February 2008. I'm sure millions of old phones are sitting in people's homes. I'm sure plenty were tossed in with regular trash and incinerated or dumped in landfills. How many were unofficially recycled? Don't tell me there are no unlicensed breakers operating in the backstreets, especially now the price of gold is so high...

The article is about recycling. No mention is made of refurbishing old phones for reuse by low-income families in Taiwan or people in other countries.

Cell-phone recycling has been mandatory in Taiwan for two years, but enforcement seems to be non-existent. People should be compelled to pay a deposit whenever they get a new handset - NT$1,000 at least - which they'd get back only when they hand the phone in for recycling or refurbishing.

Water-saving Super Toilets

A Taiwanese professor has invented a water-saving toilet that uses just four liters of water per flush, two-thirds of the amount used by other water-efficient toilets. Regular toilets, apparently, use about nine liters per flush.

According to the report, the toilet will be manufactured in China and go on sale in the US next year. But don't expect them to appear anytime soon in Taiwan's green buildings. The report says the toilet is unlikely be introduced to Taiwan's market in the near future, "because the price... would be significantly higher than that of a standard unit and the size of the domestic market is limited."

And, as has been pointed out again and again, Taiwan's ridiculously low water prices mean there's no incentive to invest in water-saving technology.