Halting a LNG Terminal Project and Building Another One Later Makes No Sense at All
On 18th December, there will be 2 referendums regarding the pathway of energy transition in Taiwan. One demands the restart of the construction of nuclear power plant 4 at Lungmen, and the other demands a halt on a LNG terminal at Datan.
The referendum to restart the construction of NPP 4 is a no-brainer: a nuclear power plant above a possibly active fault will never be able to operate safely. Recent polls show that more and more Taiwanese understand the absurdity of this referendum, especially after a high-ranking staff of Taipower explicitly expressed that his company would not be able to build a safe nuclear power plant under current conditions when showing up in a television debate as one of the representatives of the opposing side. What else more do we need to say about the project when even the nuclear engineer who was involved cannot support it? Unfortunately there are still many on-line nuclear fanatics who think they are more educated on this matter than an experienced nuclear engineer or a geology professor, which is why we ended up with this shitshow in the first place.
Whether or not Taiwanese are wise enough to reject this referendum in the end, I do not know; but referendums cannot make an unsafe nuclear power plant safer, and the odds will remain largely against this power plant even should the referendum be passed.
The referendum to halt the LNG terminal construction at Datan is a bit more complicated. Since the beginning of this initiative I have been looking forward to seeing a discussion of accelerated deployment of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and battery storage as an alternative to the terminal.
Previously I have shown the potential negative impacts of the referendum if such accelerations do not take place: a delay in the reduction of coal consumption. There might also be transmission constraints on the gas grid after 2025 (when many conventional gas power plants are planned to go online) such that the delay of the project can lead to reliability issues related to insufficient capacity (in my dispatch simulations in late March, these issues would still be tolerable by 2025, but I did not investigate further into the future).
In late March, I held the opinion that the risks of these potential negative impacts might be worth taking, so long as a clear rollout plan of renewable energy, battery storage, and targeted time-of-use prices (with a focus in industrial areas of Northern Taiwan) could be conducted shiftly in the next 3 to 4 years. However, the course of public discussion in Taiwan after the 2 blackout events in May made me lose confidence that such bold deployment plans can be possible in a time when renewables have become the scapegoat for the failure of old, outdated conventional power plants.
The environmental NGOs who are currently running the referendum campaigns are not helping either. They have always focused on local ecology issues in Datan; namely, the potential threat the terminal could bring to the local algae reef ecosystem, which, make no mistake, can be a legitimate concern. However, in order to persuade the public that this referendum will not affect the reliability of the power system, the main alternative they are proposing right now is not renewable energy, not battery systems, nor targeted time-of-use prices in the industrial areas of Northern Taiwan, but another LNG terminal at Bali that will (supposedly) be completed by 2027.
By making such a proposal, they have lost the legitimacy to question the carbon emissions from conventional gas consumption or the necessity of using conventional gas as a bridge fuel during the energy transition. How can you ask these questions when your main alternative is also another LNG terminal? But that is what they are doing right now on the television debates: criticizing the carbon emission of conventional gas power plants while simultaneously claiming that they are not against the use of conventional gas, but that the terminal just needs to be at the right place.
I understand that this can be simply a deferring strategy by the environmental NGOs running the campaign: “Worry about how to build another LNG terminal later; halt the current plan first” or something similar to that. After all, who sincerely believes that we can plan, construct, and complete a LNG terminal from scratch in just 6 years in Taiwan? In the end that terminal in Bali, if actually initiated, will probably only be completed in the early 2030s.
Such a strategy, effective though it may be, is dangerous. Proposing a pseudo-solution will only defer the necessary discussion and investment in the true solutions. In this sense this referendum is doing the same harm as the referendum on NPP4: both referendums are giving void promises that will never be realized, while we are running out of time to deploy renewable energy sources further and faster.
Painful though it is, it is thereby necessary for me to spell it out now: if the result of this referendum is simply replacing a LNG terminal with another one, then I would rather see this referendum not passed. After all, the best option we can have is to avoid both a LNG terminal project and the delay in coal reduction; the next best option is to build the terminal as soon as possible so that the delay in coal reduction can be avoided. The worst thing we should be doing is to delay the LNG terminal project, but still finish it later somewhere else. Doing so will only increase the risk of the terminal becoming a stranded carbon asset in the long term and decrease the environmental benefits it can bring by fuel switching in the short term.
