China News Service, Beijing, July 3 (Xu Tong) In 2016, when the Democratic Progressive Party first came to power, it issued an "election check" saying that "Taiwan will not increase electricity prices within 10 years". Six years later, this commitment was officially declared bankrupt. .

　　The Taiwan authorities' economic department recently announced that the average electricity price across Taiwan will increase by 8.4% from July, of which the large industrial electricity consumers of high voltage and ultra-high voltage will increase by 15%.

　　As soon as the decision was made, public opinion on the island was in an uproar.

Taiwanese media person Zhao Shaokang directly criticized the authorities' energy policy as a complete failure. "Wrong policies are more terrible than corruption!"

　　"The electricity price problem and the power shortage crisis are caused by the DPP's irresponsible 'non-nuclear homeland' energy policy!" Gao Jin Sumei, a non-party public opinion representative, criticized, now "the price of electricity has become more expensive, but there is still a shortage of electricity!"

The island's business community is worried about both electricity prices and power supply

　　As the "big consumer of electricity" that bears the brunt, Taiwan's business community said that the increase is too large, and the company may not be able to bear it.

　　Some media on the island have calculated that according to the government's price increase plan, TSMC may increase its electricity bill by 5 billion yuan a year (NTD, the same below).

　　In addition, although small businesses and commercial users of low-voltage electricity are "frozen up" in an all-round way, the electricity consumption of hotels is not included, which makes the hotel industry complain.

　　Xiao Jingtian, chairman of the Taiwan Tourism Hotel and Hotel Business Association, said that electricity prices account for a large proportion of the hotel industry's expenditure.

　　The worse news is that raising electricity prices may be just the first domino.

Some analysts on the island believe that after raising the electricity price, the increase in the cost of industrial electricity consumption in the upstream will inevitably be passed on to the middle and lower reaches, which will inevitably lead to an increase in animal prices, which will make the already serious inflation on the island even worse.

　　In addition to electricity prices, Taiwanese industry is also worried about power supply issues.

　　Everyone must remember the power outage in Taiwan on March 3 this year.

Just because of an accident at a power plant in Kaohsiung, 5.49 million residents in several counties and cities including Taipei and Kaohsiung were affected.

And within 14 days after the "303 Taiwan-wide power outage", there have been at least 11 large and small power outages in Taiwan.

　　The "American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan" recently released a white paper saying that after several power outages in March this year, it shows that the stability of power supply in Taiwan is no longer a concern, but a problem that needs to be dealt with immediately, otherwise many investment opportunities will be lost.

Behind the "price-based quantity" is an unreasonable energy policy

　　Summer is hot, and it is the peak period of electricity consumption on the island.

Over the past few days, Taiwan's electricity consumption has hit a record high.

　　Some public opinion on the island believes that the rising electricity consumption in the past few days has doubled the pressure on the Taiwan authorities who have repeatedly claimed that "the power supply is stable and there is no shortage of electricity". .

　　The Taiwan authorities claimed that one of the reasons for the rise in electricity prices was that "Taipower's power generation and purchase costs were overburdened, resulting in serious losses."

　　It is true that since the beginning of this year, global coal and natural gas prices have risen sharply, resulting in increasing losses of Taipower.

If Taiwan's electricity prices continue to "freeze up" and cannot reflect the rising cost of fuel, Taipower may lose more than 150 billion yuan this year.

　　However, the "pot" of Taipower's loss cannot be fully deducted from the global situation.

　　Or when the DPP came to power in 2016.

At that time, the DPP announced to promote energy transformation, requiring the realization of the so-called "non-nuclear homeland" plan in 2025, and adjusting the energy structure to natural gas power generation accounting for 50%, coal burning accounting for 30%, and green energy accounting for 20%.

　　However, Taiwan is not rich in natural gas resources and can only rely on imports.

This makes Taiwan's ability to resist the pressure of global natural gas prices very weak. Once the natural gas price rises due to changes in the world situation, Taiwan's electricity price will suffer "unbearable pain".

　　The DPP's abolition of nuclear power, which is the cheapest and cleanest, so that companies have to bear the heavy cost of carbon reduction, are structural problems that worsen Taiwan's electricity consumption situation.

This is why, while the big electricity consumers on the island are crying out for pain, they once again call for the importance of nuclear power.

　　If the Taiwan authorities do not seriously reflect on their own energy policies, and if things go on like this, I am afraid that as Taiwan's "Foresight" magazine said, Taiwan will usher in the second and third price increases, and the people will usher in "the constant rise in electricity bills." " era.

What Taiwan lacks is more than electricity?

　　Lack of electricity is only one part of Taiwan's economic development dilemma.

　　For a long time, Taiwan's investment environment has had "five deficiencies" and "six deficiencies".

Specifically, it refers to the lack of water, electricity, labor, land, and talents, as well as the failure of the Taiwan authorities, social disorder, failure of Taiwan's "Legislative Yuan", economic imbalance, loss of generations, and loss of Taiwan's overall goals.

　　This sounds like an apocalyptic vision.

To make matters worse, in recent years, Taiwanese public opinion generally believes that this problem is still worsening.

　　In fact, Taiwanese business circles have been raising similar warnings for some time.

Xu Shengxiong, who served as the chairman of the Taiwan Federation of Industries, once criticized heavily, saying that Taiwan not only has "five deficiencies", but even has to add "defectiveness" to become "six deficiencies".

At the time, such a statement might have seemed a bit alarmist, but now it makes people feel more concerned.

　　It is true that on the surface, the "five deficiencies" and "six deficiencies" make enterprises lack confidence in investment and production expansion, the economy lacks the driving force for sustained growth, and the people lack the conditions to improve their lives.

Behind all this, the Taiwan authorities lack a sense of responsibility and responsibility, and lack the ability to introspect and self-discipline.

　　The DPP has two "master cards": one is "anti-nuclear"; the other is "Taiwan independence".

Various practices of the DPP in recent years have proved that after relying on these two "cards" to harvest votes and gain power, they just want to seize every opportunity to eat and wipe them during their term of office, and their commitment to voters has long been thrown away In the back of your mind, let alone making long-term plans for the sustainable and healthy development of Taiwan's society, all the bad consequences will eventually be left to the Taiwanese people to bear.

　　Indeed, Taiwan lacks electricity.

But what Taiwan lacks is more than electricity?

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