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Diary from Taiwan: The island nation grapples with nuclear and clean power

Ucilia Wang — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:39:53 +0000

Taipei, Taiwan: It was a powerful (6.0) earthquake that ripped through central Taiwan that caused me to think about the similarities between Japan and Taiwan’s energy futures. A day after I arrived in Taiwan a little over two weeks ago, the strong earthquake caused my family’s apartment of the 11th floor in Taipei to sway back and forth — the tremor killed one person, injured at least 19 near the epicenter and invited anti-nuclear newspaper articles the following morning.

As a close neighbor of Japan, Taiwan’s energy future shares similarities for both energy technology development as well as energy challenges. Both island countries have traditionally relied mostly on imported fossil fuel resources and are highly earthquake prone, which have fueled intense debates over nuclear power policies as well as a further push into clean energy.

A wind farm in Miaoli, Taiwan.

A week after the quake, I hiked to a seaside town about two hours south of Taipei, and was greeted with a coastline dotted with wind turbines. On another excursion during the trip, a hydroelectric dam near Taipei exposed distressingly low water levels and a big swath of dry lake shores. The water from the reservoir irrigates farms and supplies drinking water for homes and businesses. Like parts of the U.S. gripped by drought, Taiwan needs more rain and to figure out ways to make up for the shortfall.

Renewable energy, resource conservation and protests over nuclear power are nothing new in the history of energy development in many parts of the world. But population and economic growth, which taxes and at times destroys our environment, requires much more thoughtful planning for where and how we produce energy. Taiwan, along with mainland China, and post-Fukushima Japan, are increasingly being forced to address these issues.

Look to Japan

Japan has become a hot market for solar energy and other renewable energy generation, as well as energy storage, after an earthquake wrecked the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011. The government put in place generous subsidies for alternative energy development. Both IHS and Bloomberg New Energy Finance predict that Japan will add more solar power generation than any country except China in 2013.

A map of wind farms in Taiwan.

The Fukushima disaster prompted Taiwan to re-examine its nuclear power policy and stirred protests against the construction of a fourth nuclear power plant, which is actually close to completion.

Taiwan also subsidizes clean power and plans to increase solar and wind energy development. Late last year, the government raised the 2013 target for new solar energy generation by 30 percent to 130 megawatts. The country is pushing for wind farm construction on the coast because it already has made use of suitable wind resource island, according to Taiwan Power Co. By the end of 2012, Taiwan had 559.66 megawatts of cumulative wind power generation capacity and 134.3 megawatts of solar power generation capacity, the utility said.

Shihmen Dam in Taoyuan, Taiwan.

Renewable electricity generation capacity (excluding hydropower) accounted for just over 6 percent of Taiwan’s total (41.4 gigawatts). In terms of the actual power produced — solar and wind farms can’t generate power around the clock — and renewable electricity made up nearly 3 percent of the total power produced, according to Taiwan Power’s most recent, 2012 sustainability report.

Solar energy should play a larger in Taiwan given that, like Japan, Taiwan is home to major solar cell makers. Promoting more solar energy production also will help Taiwan’s domestic solar manufacturers, who also have been hit hard by an oversupply of solar cells in the global market over the past two years. The glut has caused prices to crash and forced many solar manufacturers to go out of business.

The low water level at the Shihmen Dam.

One of the largest Taiwanese solar cell makers, Neo Solar Power, recently announced a survival plan to merge with another Taiwanese solar cell maker, DelSolar. Neo Solar said the combined company will have “close to 2 gigawatts” of production capacity, which would be comparable to First Solar’s capacity of 1.9 gigawatts at the end of 2012.

For Taiwan and its 23.3 million people, adding more solar and wind power makes economic sense and helps it to gradually reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels and perhaps its own struggle with whether to build more nuclear power plants over the long run. As the nation takes cues from Japan, and others, expect to see a greater push into clean power, and more controversy over nuclear.

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Apple’s iPhone dilemma: Should it make a “Chinese special”?

Kevin Fitchard — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 19:36:27 +0000

If Apple would just support China’s unique 3G technology, the iPhone would make a killing in the largest country in the world – or so concludes Kevin Wang, director of China electronics research at IHS iSuppli. Apple ranks a woeful seventh in China’s smartphone sales, but according to Wang it could easily do something about it.

“Among all the international smartphone brands competing in China, Apple is the only one not offering a product that complies with the domestic TD-SCDMA air standard,” Wang said in a new IHS iSuppli’s report. “For Apple, this is a huge disadvantage, as TD-SCDMA represents the fastest-growing major air standard for smartphones in China, with shipments of compliant phones expected to rise by a factor of 10 from 2011 to 2016.”

He’s not wrong. By snubbing TD-SCDMA, Apple misses the opportunity to sell the iPhone through the country’s largest carrier China Mobile, and by “large” we’re talking scale unheard of in the U.S. or Europe. China Mobile is the world’s largest operator with 650 million connections – six times more than Verizon Wireless. While Apple counts the country’s No. 2 and No. 3 carriers, China Unicom and China Telecom as distributors, together they only serve 30 percent of the market. In other words, China Mobile is the big enchilada of the globe.

An Apple store in China.

So why doesn’t Apple take a bite? Adding TD-SCDMA support to the iPhone isn’t quite as simple as it sounds. As I’ve written before, adding a new radio technology to a phone isn’t just a matter of procuring the right Qualcomm chip, it requires power amplifiers, antennas and filters – all of which add expense, drain power and generally make a mess of the radio frequency characteristics of the device. Apple could do it, sure, but it would wind up with a crappier and costlier iPhone.

If Apple really wants to tackle China Mobile, it will need to come out with an iPhone variant for China, and so far Apple has been loath to do any such thing. Apple did build a CDMA iPhone for Verizon, but after the first generation of device, Apple once again unified its product line, embedding both CDMA and GSM radios in every phone. Plus, it didn’t take long before Apple started selling that device to other CDMA carriers globally.

Would Apple consider designing a “Chinese Special”? The answer is a big maybe.

China Mobile may be a big juicy target, but Apple’s strategy has always been to move markets rather than move with the market. It’s so far taken the attitude that if you want an iPhone in China, you should move to Unicom or Telecom. It took that same approach in the U.S. for years with AT&T. And it’s why some of the world’s other large carriers, T-Mobile USA and NTT DoCoMo for two, get snubbed.

But at some point Apple will have to start making iPhone variants whether it wants to or not. There’s a huge amount of fragmentation in the LTE bands used globally –there are six designated 4G bands in the U.S. alone – which will force Apple and other vendors to create region-specific and even carrier-specific devices (subscription required). The new iPad is just the first example: there are separate devices for AT&T and Verizon’s separate LTE networks.

If Apple has to start churning out variants anyway, it may figure it might as well make a Chinese iPhone, too.

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For basic cable, movies fend off cord-cutting, report says

Daniel Frankel — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:06:52 +0000

As basic cable original series prove to be important product differentiators for over-the-top services like Netflix, some of the networks that produce these shows are actually relying more on high-priced theatrical movie acquisitions to maintain or increase their subscriber counts and drive ad revenue.

So says a report released Tuesday by IHS Screen Digest, which justifies the $20 million-and-above payments currently being made by cable channels like News Corp.’s FX to license blockbuster film titles.

For its part, FX is the resident spendthrift of the cable spectrum, paying top dollar, for example, to secure first TV window rights for current summer titles like Prometheus, Snow White and the Huntsman, The Dictator, Battleship and Madagascar 3 before they even exited theaters. Of the 50 highest-grossing movies of 2011, FX bought first-free-TV-window rights to 28 of them.

Also read: For Netflix users, “catching up” has a catch

And while the network’s brand has been increasingly tied to original series like Sons of Anarchy and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 57 percent of FX’s air time is consumed by movies, IHS notes, and that’s driving its growth.

Now accounting for 20 percent of the revenue taken in by News Corp.’s cable empire, FX has seen income grow from just $279.7 million in 2006 to $460.7 million in 2011.

“When you look at the ramp-up of ad revenue for FX, as they’ve increased their movie content, they’ve also increased their ad revenue,” Erik Brannon, the IHS analyst who prepared the report, told paidContent.

Among networks not devoted full-time to movies (a la Fox Movie Channel), AMC also ranks high for movie reliance. While the network is known for original-series hits like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead — now staples in the Netflix streaming lineup — nearly 80 percent of its air time is filled with movies.

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As iOS sales grow, who benefits? The gyroscope market!

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:54:00 +0000

Apple is now taking most of the smartphone profits from the market, but a few component manufacturers are coming along for the ride. Sales of gyroscopes rose 66 percent in 2011 over the prior year, according to iHS, as record iOS device sales pushed the small motion sensor market to new highs.

This marks the first time that gyroscopes outsold accelerometers to take the top spot for the overall $1.6 billion spent in MEMS, or the microelectromechanical systems market. Both devices measure motion, but at a high level there’s a key difference: gyroscopes detect rotation while accelerometers measure acceleration.

While many of Apple’s competitors use gyroscopes in smartphones and tablets, some are still using the less sophisticated accelerometers. In contrast, all of Apple’s iOS devices — including the iPod touch — use gyroscopes. For this reason, iHS suggests that a boom in fourth quarter iPhone and iPad sales pushed gyroscopes ahead of the pack.

Based on device sales forecasts, and a growing need for such sensors, iHS figures that the gyroscope will maintain the top spot among MEMS, eventually eclipsing $1 billion in sales by 2014.

I actually wonder if iHS might be low on its estimates. The research firm notes that the 3-axis gyro was the biggest seller, accounting for 71 percent of all gyroscopes sold. These are useful for both smartphones and tablets to determine the x, y and z axis of a device. That function coincides with the growth in mobile gaming as mobile chips gain better graphics. And we know that the market for both smartphones and tablets is on an upward trajectory; perhaps more so after Windows 8 arrives as a third major option in the tablet market.

But I’m thinking of other connected devices that can benefit from motion sensors. Television remotes for smart televisions are one; after all, who wants to play Angry Birds on a big screen with a joystick? Health-related gadgets, another growing device area, are another sector for opportunity. Sports activities could be as well: think of gyroscopes in a game ball or equipment to monitor scoring plays or metrics on speed and distance, for example.

Smartphones and tablets may have given rise to the lowly gyroscope, but it’s just the beginning as many of our devices get smarter and more connected.

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Sustainability Reporting Software: An Overview

Thu, 06 May 2010 07:00:50 +0000

With the growing recognition that global warming demands a business response, many companies are budgeting for climate-change plans. These plans aim to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions across a wide range of activities, including procurement, manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, retailing, IT, waste disposal, and regulatory compliance. In drawing up and implementing these plans, though, businesses have made an unexpected discovery: The shift to greener operations creates competitive advantages by cutting costs, preparing for regulation of carbon emissions and presenting an attractively green ethos to the market. Sustainable business, it turns out, is good business.

To help implement their plans, companies can choose from a variety of enterprise sustainability software, also known as carbon management software, delivered via a Web browser in the form of Software as a Service. These systems collect resource-consumption data distributed geographically and functionally across the enterprise including electricity metering, transportation fuel costs and emissions from manufacturing and production facilities. The objective is to bring this data into one place where it can be examined and analyzed comprehensively.

Sustainability software covers three broad areas. One category is aimed at IT and helps manage energy consumption in data centers. A second category monitors and analyzes the flow of electricity in smart-grid installations. The third helps enterprises manage resources, emissions and waste. It collects data and offers visualization tools. The most advanced systems offer sophisticated modeling capabilities, which can aid greatly in formulating and implementing strategies for reducing an enterprise’s environmental footprint.

This third category is the subject of this report. While the green IT and smart-grid categories are relatively mature, the enterprise market is still taking shape. Moreover, this area has potential to become the largest by far. While the traditional market for sustainability software consists of Fortune 500 companies, smaller operations are beginning to recognize the benefits. Sustainability software will become attractive to businesses of all sizes and sectors as industries develop standards for tracking, evaluating, and reporting greenhouse gas emissions and as government regulations spur trade in carbon credits and environmental labeling of consumer products.

This report surveys the history of enterprise sustainability software systems, their capabilities, and how they’re being used in a variety of industries. It also offers recommendations for companies interested in using these tools.

22 Carbon Management Software Firms You Should Know About

Katie Fehrenbacher — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:31:15 +0000

Yep, there are actually 22 firms selling software to help companies and governments manage their carbon footprints. And most of them are older, established companies (here’s our previous list of 10 Carbon Management Startups). Research firm Verdantix put together an extensive list of 22 carbon management software companies and ranked them in categories according to customer wins and features. Verdantix predicts that by 2011, the carbon management software industry will start to boom, rising from $120 million that year to $250 million in 2012, as companies realize that Microsoft Excel and utility bills — the most common way to calculate carbon footprints right now — are ineffective and difficult to use.

By that time, I’d predict that the carbon management market will start to consolidate and some very clear leaders will move far ahead, and others will get bought up or will go under. Already, one company in Verdantix’s “Leaders” category bought up another one. And it will only take a few really big customer wins — city, state or even parts of the federal government or Fortune 500 companies — to push some of these software makers way ahead of others.

Here’s Verdantix’s 22 carbon software management companies, ranked by “Leaders,” “Challengers” to those leaders, “Specialists,” and “Entrepreneurs.”

Leaders:

Enablon: The French company counts customers like Air France KLM Group, Dell, Del Monte, L’Oréal, McGraw Hill, Symantec, Texas Instruments, The Timberland Company, and Total.

Enviance: Customers include large power and oil companies like CH2MHill, Chevron, Georgia Power, Southern Company, AEP, DuPont, Valero Refining. Founded in 1999, the company is based in Carlsbad, Calif.

ESS: The nearly two decade-old ESS, which has a history of making crisis management software, was recently bought by competitor IHS (see below). ESS says over half of the Fortune 500 and 75 percent of the Fortune 100 have purchased its software.

Hara: The newest and only startup company in the leaders section, Hara, has signed on customers like Coca-Cola, the city of Palo Alto, Calif., and has raised $20 million from venture capitalists including Kleiner Perkins. The company is based in Redwood City, Calif.

IHS: Founded in 1959, publicly-traded IHS provides software for asset management for companies. The company is based in Englewood, Colorado.

ProcessMAP: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based ProcessMap sells software for environmental, health and safety compliance with customers spanning across industries.

Challengers (of the leaders):

CA: Founded in the mid-’70s, CA recently scored UK retailer Tesco as a customer for its ecoSoftware. The company is based in Islandia, New York.

Carbonetworks: Founded in 2005 and based in San Francisco, Calif., Carbonetworks raised a $5 million Series A round from NGEN Partners.

Greenstone Carbon Management: Greenstone is a specialist carbon management firm and works with customers like Fujitsu, Ocado, SAB Miller, Virgin Group, ZBD, and

SAP: Massive software company SAP bought up 2-year-old startup Clear Standards, which sold software to manage carbon emissions, energy consumption, and water use.

SAS: Another huge software company based in Cary, North Carolina, SAS sells a variety of software including “sustainability management.”

Specialist solutions:

Camco: A two-decade old company, U.K.-based Camco has taken a lead in developing sustainable projects across indutries.

CarbonView: Online market research firm CarbonView offers supply chain expertise, the company was founded by the MVL Group, which is owned by Allied Capital Corporation.

PE International: Founded in 1989, German PE International has customers like Allianz, Bayer, Daimler, Siemens, Toyota, ThyssenKrupp and Volkswagen.

Entrepreneurs (which Verdantix says need to invest in product development):

Carbon Hub: Based in England, the startup says it strictly follows the accounting tool the GHG Protocol.

Cintellate: Founded in 1994, the company makes environment, health and safety software for the building and construction, manufacturing, oil and gas, and power industries.

Foresite Systems: Twelve year old, San Jose, Calif.-based Foresite sells a Global Environmental Management System for companies to manage their environmental footprint.

Green Oak Solutions: Founded in 2004, the Scottish company sells software for companies to deal with waste management and recycling.

Intelex Technologies: Founded in 1992, Intelex sells software for environmental, health, and safety and includes customers like Virgin Atlantic, Volvo, AEP, Heinz, Sara Lee, and Wyeth.

Perillon: Littleton, Massachusetts-based Perillon sells software for audits and inspections including air quality compliance, water and waste, energy tracking, as well as greenhouse gas accounting.

Tradeslot: The only Australian company on the list, Tradeslot offers carbon software to get companies ready for Australia’s unique carbon environment.

Verteego: Founded in January of 2008, Paris-based Verteego says it works with over 300 companies and government organizations.

Images courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons and Verdantix.

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