Taisugar plans to boost biogas energy generation

2016/11/28

State-run Taiwan Sugar Corp., one of the nation’s largest agricultural enterprises, established Nov. 16 a biogas utilization division, marking a significant milestone in the company’s efforts to boost renewable energy production.

According to Taisugar President Charles Huang, the new unit will enhance the firm’s competitiveness and profitability while helping it fulfill its corporate environmental responsibility. The company’s long-term goal is to spin off the division into a subsidiary that could offer related technologies and services to other organizations in the domestic and regional markets, he told lawmakers during a committee meeting at the Legislative Yuan Nov. 21 in Taipei City.

Headquartered in southern Taiwan’s Tainan City, Taisugar has diversified in recent decades into such fields as biotechnology, ecotourism and floriculture. It also runs the largest pig farming business in the country, operating 19 locations that produce about 380,000 hogs annually.

Taisugar has to date installed biogas-powered generators at four of its pig farms in southern Taiwan’s Pingtung County. Although they produce electricity, these devices are primarily designed to protect the environment by consuming methane, according to a project manager with the company.

The biogas utilization division will oversee projects to introduce cutting-edge capture devices and generators that can produce significantly larger amounts of electricity. At Donghaifong Farm in Pingtung’s Changzhi Township, for instance, Taisugar plans to invest NT$688 million (US$21.6 million) on installing advanced European biogas technologies that will transform manure collected from around 30,000 pigs— as well as excretions from chickens, ducks and other animals at 24 privately owned farms in the area—into energy.

Scheduled for completion in late 2018, the Donghaifong facilities will have a power generation capacity of roughly 200 kilowatts. The project can serve as a role model to other enterprises in the development of circular agriculture, which advocates the use of waste materials in production processes so as to minimize pollution, the project manager said.

Taiwan currently generates a total of 740 megawatts from biogas and other biomass sources, including domestic and industrial waste, according to the Bureau of Energy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The BOE estimates that this figure will rise to 813 MW by 2025.

Taisugar’s biogas program forms part of government efforts to foster renewables as the country phases out the use of nuclear power. The administration of President Tsai Ing-wen has set a target of increasing the ratio of Taiwan’s electricity generated via renewable resources such as geothermal, solar and wind from the current 4 percent to 20 percent by 2025.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=249726&ctNode=2194&mp=9)