Picking up where I left off from the last post below this one-here is a new article talking in more detail about Solar, LED and Electric Car markets and planned support for those industries.
I’m kind of excited about this. One of the reason the Taiwanese are so innovative is because they have been left to sink or swim on their own. The government here traditionally has offered little support other than the occasional tax incentive and in fact tends to follow the small and medium businesses lead when making policy. So a bit of the tail wagging the dog. While the role of small and medium businesses gets more and more challenging with conglomerates crowding the space, I know that they’ll always have a role because of their innovation and agility and ability to make decisions quickly. The conglomerates are very slow moving and take a long time trying to get things done by consensus, often missing the very markets they sought to enter and dominate.
I am very happy solar is one of the new technologies being promoted here since it’s potential for sustainable energy production. My hope is that they’ll come up with more environmentally friendly ways of producing the components for solar power. It’s a little disappointing and self-defeating when some environmentally friendly product is produced when it does not utilize an environmentally friendly process itself.
LED’s are an exciting field. Here in Taiwan all of the traffic lights have been converted to LED using ones. China has similar plans:
The greatest growth drivers are government policies and legislation that favor energy saving. A few countries have already outlawed incandescent light bulbs, which lose some 70 percent of their energy to heat, and others plan to phase them out over the coming years. China, for instance, has instituted the “Ten Cities, Ten Thousand Lights” plan, a program to revamp six million traditional streetlights with LED lights by 2011.
Electric Vehicles are obviously another great concept that is becoming a reality with major players like Warren Buffet getting involved via his investment in BYD. The Taiwanese are already making soem maor strides in that direction as well:
E-One Moli Energy, which belongs to the Taiwan Cement group, supplies the lithium-ion battery for the Mini E electric vehicle by German carmaker BMW. Taichung-based Fukuta Electronics & Machinery Company produces the motor for the high-performance electric sports car, Tesla Roadster, made by industry newcomer, Tesla Motors. And even the company that helped the Californian electric vehicle maker design the system for the US$125,000 Roadster — AC Propulsion — is 80-percent funded by Taiwanese investors.
