On the morning of February 13, representatives from Taoyuan’s sister cities—Kansas City (USA), Orange Walk Town (Belize), Gumi City (South Korea), Kagawa Prefecture (Japan), and Akita Prefecture (Japan)—visited the Taoyuan Biomass Energy Center (TBEC), accompanied by Mei-Chih Li, Deputy Director of the Office of Coast and Resource Circulation Construction (OCRCC). The visit aimed to exchange experiences in waste-to-resource processing. The TBEC is the first facility in Taiwan to integrate heat treatment, anaerobic digestion, and solidification and landfill units for waste processing. It is also the nation’s first renewable energy plant with certified waste-to-energy power generation facilities.
According to the OCRCC, the Center is one of a few large-scale waste processing and power generation facilities established by the government in the past 20 years. Its heat treatment unit can process 219,000 tons of combustible household waste annually, with the residues being processed into recycled materials for public construction. The anaerobic digestion unit can handle 49,000 tons of kitchen waste each year. The Center contributes to several municipal policies, such as “proactive waste disposal,” “zero waste and diversified processing,” and “circular economy.”
The construction of TBEC, led by the city government and EVER ECOVE Corporation, has been highly recognized by the city representatives, especially given the challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite delays in the delivery of imported equipment and a domestic labor shortage, the project team successfully minimized the impact and completed the construction. The representatives were particularly interested in the advanced technologies adopted by the Center. Its heat treatment unit is the first to integrate crushing and sorting equipment in the country. It features water-cooled grates with high-efficiency boilers, achieving a power generation efficiency of over 28%, the highest in Taiwan. The anaerobic digestion unit uses anaerobic microorganisms to decompose organic waste into biomass energy, providing solutions for kitchen waste disposal and reducing the risk of African swine fever.
Regarding net-zero carbon emissions, the OCRCC highlighted that the TBEC generates approximately 220 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy annually, enough to power 54,000 households. This energy production is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 100,000 tons per year, equivalent to the carbon absorption of 10,000 hectares of green space. These efforts make a significant contribution to both Taiwan’s and global sustainable development and net-zero emissions goals.