A2peak Power’s building-integrated PV at the Taipei European School provides power and serves as a shelter for children come rain or shine. (Courtesy of A2peak Power Co. Ltd.)
By June Tsai
Japan’s recent crisis has shaken the myth of safe and clean nuclear energy. Appalled that such a catastrophe could occur in one of the most technologically advanced nations of the world, governments are re-examining the safety of this power source as citizens press for greater transparency on relevant policies.
In the midst of this emergency, Hu Shiang-ling, CEO of Taiwan’s solar panel manufacturer A2peak Power Co. Ltd., looks to Germany, where in regional elections at the end of March, voters responded to the Fukushima disaster by putting the anti-nuclear Green Party into power in coalitions with the Social Democrats.
This blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats came despite her recent reversal on pro-nuclear policy, when she temporarily closed down seven of Germany’s 17 nuclear plants in the aftermath of events in Japan.
In Hu’s view, the citizens of Germany, where she has lived for 15 years, cast their ballots to tell politicians what kind of future they want. “Democratic elections are not about lending support [to a candidate]. They are tools to monitor a government, and the Germans did just that,” she said.
“It is indeed up to a country’s people to decide whether they want nuclear power,” she said in a recent interview with Taiwan Today. “It is not a matter for experts to decide, whether they are pro- or anti-nuclear. It is a matter of politics in which citizens should have a role,” she said.
It may seem unusual in Taiwan for a business figure to make comments such as these, but Hu has gone from a concerned intellectual to advocate for renewable energy to active player in the photovoltaic (PV) industry.
Hu was a student of the sociology of science and technology in the early 1990s when the Taiwan government’s plan to build the fourth nuclear power plant on the northeastern coast, where two plants were already in operation, met strong civic resistance from Taiwan’s increasingly democratized society. Her graduate research focused on the nuclear debates of the time.
Hu was involved in the anti-nuclear movement, but also tried to understand the arguments of nuclear engineers and policymakers in their context. “As a researcher, I would not say which of the opposing sides was more persuasive scientifically for me as there was a basic incommunicability between nuclear engineers and opposing scientists,” she said.
Taiwan’s government eventually approved the budget for the construction of the fourth nuclear power plant in 1994. Hu and her husband went to study in Germany around the same time.
Living in Germany, she began to realize what saving power really means and, gradually, how a nuclear-free homeland could be possible.
“You feel the pinch every time you switch on the power because of the high price of electricity,” she said. In Taiwan, a kilowatt-hour of electricity costs less than US$0.09, in comparison to Germany’s US$0.3. “The impact of one’s chosen way of living, that is, whether it was power-saving enough or not, is very real,” she said.
In 1999, shortly before Hu received her doctorate from the University of Bielefeld and assumed a teaching position in Bochum, the Taiwanese couple bought a 160-year-old farmhouse, a government-designated historic building, and began to repair it.
They took note of the local government’s rebates and low-interest loans for buildings that optimize energy supply and follow traditional building methods.
Having renovated their house in accordance with German law, they learned how traditional wisdom works in keeping a house warm. “Building materials and methods, down to details such as which way the house’s doors open, play a critical role, helping reduce energy consumption,” she said.
“We developed a brand new feeling about what an environmentally friendly way of life means, and finally understood that saving energy doesn’t mean we have to compromise the comfort we want in a home.”
Indoor lighting and air conditioning normally take up the lion’s share of a country’s total electricity consumption, Hu said. “But a comfortable life doesn’t entail consuming lots of energy to keep interiors warm, in Germany’s case, or cool, in Taiwan’s case. What we need is to follow nature’s way and provide a sensible support policy.”
Encouraged by their house restoration experience, Hu rallied dozens of people in January 2003 to build houses in an aboriginal village in Taiwan’s Nantou County for victims of the Sept. 21, 1999 earthquake.
A few months later she brought Taiwanese volunteers together with a German initiative constructing homes for victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Belarus.
She then collaborated on reconstruction projects in tsunami-devastated Ache province, Indonesia, in 2004, and a southern Taiwan aboriginal settlement damaged by Typhoon Morakot in 2009.
Rebuilding homes by bringing many people together and sourcing local materials and techniques became a kind of social movement for Hu, leading her out of school and into the life of the people. Her later involvement in the PV industry, one that embraces hope for the earth’s sustainability, has been a similar experience.
As she pursued her own path toward sustainable living, Germany’s spearheading of the movement to reduce dependence on nonrenewable fossil fuels and provide incentive programs for alternatives, as well as the results it has achieved in the past 20 years, continued to impress her.
Germany launched support for solar energy development with its 1,000 solar roofs program in 1991, followed by the 100,000 roofs program in 1999, both offering loans for photovoltaic installments. The Renewable Energy Sources Act of 2000 enticed more individual investors and companies to PV through low-interest loans and buy-down programs, combined with a mandatory purchase requirement by public utilities.
The latest statistics show that renewable energy now provides 17 percent of Germany’s electricity, with 2 percent coming from solar PV. “The figure is expected to reach 50 percent by 2050, with 20 percent from solar energy,” Hu said. “Government measures help increase installed PV capacity, create demand, bring down costs and boost Germany’s PV industry development.”
Observing events in Germany, she realized that renewable energy combined with efficient and conservative energy use in houses and construction would be an ideal solution for her home country, which in 2009 relies on nuclear energy for 13 percent of its power and fossil fuels for almost 75 percent.
The opportunity to put her German experience into practice in Taiwan came when a German PV enterprise with technical expertise proposed a joint venture, eyeing Taiwan’s quality manufacturing capacity and prospective market. Thus A2peak Power was established in December 2006.
The PV modules produced by the company are highly regarded in the European market. The firm weathered the global economic recession of 2008 relatively unscathed, installing more production lines in 2009. Today, the company has 252 “green collar employees,” as Hu refers to them.
In a recent development, A2peak began supplying custom-made modules for building-integrated PV, or BIPV, and participating in local solar housing projects.
Regarding the local market, Hu pointed out that “six of the world’s top 10 solar cell suppliers are Taiwanese, but solar applications are few and far between on this subtropical island.” Although the Taiwan government passed its own Renewable Energy Act, it fails to provide supplementary measures and infrastructure to encourage investment or entice bank loans, she added.
Yet Hu is determined to demonstrate through her business that green energy makes both sense and money. “Economic development and environmental protection are compatible,” she said. “The PV, construction materials and architectural sectors would all benefit from policies such as those implemented in Germany,” she added.
“The harnessing, conversion and distribution of solar energy produce no noise, no waste, and require no potential or kinetic energies,” she said. In contrast, nonrenewable energies involve processing and waste disposal costs that have been constantly overlooked by policymakers, who argue that nuclear is the cheapest form of power, she said.
The most understated risk is the threat to human life and the environment. “I believe the safest technologies are those that the average person can understand without experts’ persuasion,” she said.
In the wake of the disaster in Japan, “it is no longer a matter of whether we are for or against nuclear power,” Hu said. “We just need to decide what consequences we can live with.”
This article first appeared in online Taiwan Today April 8, 2011.
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