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AsiaElec COMMENTARY AsiaElec
some of these to human error; employees erroneously The referendum being non-binding meant the
leaning on switches, or flipping the wrong switch by government could officially ignore the popular vote
mistake. and keep building CPPs. Tsai’s DPP did just that.
Few of these excuses are actually believed.
To appease an increasingly disgruntled population Passing the buck
promises of investment have been made by the state- For a president quoted as responding “Well,
owned Taipower, although little in the way of detail is my term ends in 2024, so anything after that, I
announced once the lights are back on. don’t know. I won’t be responsible” in a recent
Ironically, it was the anti-nuclear DPP government of Huffington Post piece on Taiwan when chal-
President Tsai Ing-wen, early in her presidency, who made lenged by Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Lee Yuan-
the discreet decision to restart two of Taiwan’s reactors at tseh, her days in power are now numbered.
the time in a bid to prevent the blackouts getting worse. They will not be without a final flourish of opti-
Yet despite the government, in power on the back of an mism on the renewables front, however, as one
anti-nuclear campaign, opting to rely on its NPPs, when local pro-DPP news blog recently claimed that
given the opportunity for a genuine policy reversal in “new green energy capacity (will) be equivalent
2018, President Tsai opted to ignore the will of the people: to two nuclear reactors.”
a referendum in November of that year saw the majority It is a claim few with inside knowledge of
of Taiwanese choose to maintain a nuclear option as part Taiwan’s energy woes or wider make-up will or
of the energy mix. are taking seriously.
Week 05 02 •February•2023 www. NEWSBASE .com P5
