Rising Water Demand in Taiwan: Cheap Water and the Advent of the Virtual Reservoir (Pat Gao, TaiwanReview)

Feb.03, 2009 in Public Works, Water Conservation, Water Crisis, Water Industry, Water Management, Water Technology

(Feb. 2, 2009, Pat Gao, The Tawain Review)

Though hindered by the artificially low price of water, Taiwan is making headway in conservation and recycling efforts.

According to a report by the Water Resources Agency (WRA) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, by 2021 Taiwan’s total demand for water from conventional sources like rivers and dams will rise to 20 billion metric tons per year. Taiwan’s projected supply of water from such sources, however, will provide only 19.2 billion metric tons per year by 2021, an annual shortage of 800 million metric tons. The figures are extrapolated from the present consumption level of 18 billion metric tons and an economic development rate of between 3 percent and 4 percent. To prevent the damage a water shortage could do to living standards and economic development, the government has set the goal of capping the consumption of water from conventional sources at 20 billion metric tons, while curbing demand via greater conservation and increasing supply through recycling.

Joses Wu, the WRA’s deputy director-general, points out that the increasingly fickle weather patterns caused by global climate change have made Taiwan’s already limited supply of water from conventional sources less dependable. For example, reservoirs, which constitute the island’s most reliable source of fresh water, supply about 24 percent of total demand, but climate change has had the effect of putting them under stress. “Recent years have shown a tendency toward more annual rainfall, but fewer rainy days,” Wu says. “When it does rain, it rains more intensely, making it difficult for reservoirs to ensure a stable supply. The heavy rain also causes the reservoirs to accumulate silt more quickly.”

In response, central and local government water policy has increasingly focused on making better use of available water through conservation and recycling. “These sources will work like our virtual reservoirs,” Wu says.

Conservation Impediment

One of the major impediments to Taiwan’s efforts to conserve and recycle water is the low price of tap water. The cost of water has remained unchanged for the last 14 years, with the average household devoting only 0.5 percent to 0.6 percent of total monthly expenditures for their water bills. In contrast, households in arid Israel devote about 10 percent of total monthly household expenditures to paying water bills, according to figures compiled by that country’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Not surprisingly, Israel has one of the highest rates of water conservation in the world. In Taiwan, however, the artificially low price of water effectively discourages conservation and recycling efforts. Individuals and businesses do not pay anywhere near the actual production cost of the water they use, putting an increasingly scarce resource outside the normal system of supply and demand, which regulates the use of most other commodities to some degree. “This makes a market economy for water virtually impossible,” says Chiou Ren-jie, secretary-general of the Taiwan Water Environment Association (TWEA) and an associate professor in the Department of Environment and Property Management at Taipei County’s Jinwen University of Science and Technology.

Government officials and academics have said, however, that the price of water is unlikely to increase very much in the near future, largely because prices for other commodities such as fuel have been raised recently and the government does not want to place an additional burden on citizens. Nevertheless, there are still many things that can be done to encourage conservation and recycling. Chou Chang-erh, a senior research fellow at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER), says that education should play a central role in the effort to change patterns of water use. The government should make a consistent effort to inform the public about the scarcity of Taiwan’s natural resources, including water, as well as increase education about effective conservation techniques, she adds.

Although water remains cheap, initial conservation efforts have borne results. On average, per capita water consumption has remained steady since 1993, even as per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has grown. In 1993, consumption was 287 liters per person per day, while per capita GDP was US$12,475. In 2006, consumption was 284 liters per person per day, while per capita GDP had more than doubled to US$28,011. Through promoting greater reliance on water conservation and recycling, the WRA’s goal is to reduce per capita use of conventional water to 260 liters per day by 2021.

To achieve higher conservation rates, since 1998 the Ministry of Economic Affairs has promoted a certification system for water-saving appliances including washing machines, toilets, urinals, faucets and showerheads. In the case of washing machines, the certification assures customers that less than 20 liters of water are used for every kilogram of clothing washed. Certified toilets use less than six liters of water per flush, while certified showerheads ensure flows of less than 10 liters per minute. As of November 2008, 769 items from 110 manufacturers had been certified. At present, the use of these appliances is estimated to save up to 160 million metric tons of water per year, according to the WRA. TWEA’s Chiou Ren-jie says that Taiwan’s accumulated experience and innovative ability in mold and die production will continue to push technical progress in this area.

If done on a sufficiently large scale, filtering and cleaning wastewater and then adding it back into Taiwan’s supply system could provide a steady, reliable source of usable water. In terms of connecting households to wastewater systems, however, there is much room for improvement. Currently, not quite 20 percent of Taiwan’s households are served by public sewerage systems carrying wastewater to treatment plants. While Taiwan’s two biggest cities, Taipei and Kaohsiung, have household connection rates to wastewater systems of more than 60 percent and 40 percent respectively, there are counties that still see very low connection rates, with some hovering close to zero.

“It’s an embarrassment for Taiwan, especially given its high level of development in many other areas, to lag behind even many less developed countries in terms of sewerage connection rates,” Chiou says. “However, we have a great opportunity to construct more wastewater treatment systems and connect more homes to them. The construction of new treatment plants should also be planned from the very beginning to connect to these recycling systems.”

Taipei City started working on treatment plants and sewerage systems in the early 1970s as part of a project to improve public health. After the promulgation of the Sewerage Law in 1984, the Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency has been responsible for constructing and connecting households to sewerage systems around Taiwan. However, such work does not come cheap, as the agency estimates that each additional 1 percent rise in the rate of household connections nationwide costs around NT$10 billion (US$303 million). The budget for constructing sewerage systems outside Taipei City has been increased in recent years, rising from NT$4 billion (US$118 million) in 2001 to more than NT$11 billion (US$338 million) in 2006. These figures do not include Taipei City because it began connecting households much earlier and its system is already fairly developed using its own budget.

The high cost of constructing sewerage systems has led the government to search for private investment, chiefly under the build-operate-transfer model. Under this model, households in areas served by newly built sewerage systems would pay a service fee to the local government, which would share revenue with the builder. Through such investment, it is predicted that Taiwan’s total household wastewater treatment rate could rise from the current 20 percent to more than 30 percent by 2015. “That would mean a total of more than 1.6 billion metric tons of wastewater that could be treated and potentially reused each year,” the WRA’s Joses Wu says. Many of Taiwan’s older treatment plants were largely designed for the purpose of cleaning water sufficiently for discharge into rivers and the ocean, a lower standard than that for household tap water. “In order to prepare for future demand, new treatment plants should possess a more advanced level of treatment capability,” Wu says.

Thinking Small

Another possibility for conserving tap water is greater use of local, small-scale systems that capture rainwater and reuse “grey” water–such as that from washing machines and showers, for example. The systems can be installed in individual buildings or wider areas such as university campuses. In the case of the grey-water systems, the water is treated, but not to the same standard as tap water. The water produced by these “reclaimed water” systems as well as rainwater collection systems can be used for purposes such as flushing toilets and watering plants.

Such small-scale systems also require an initial investment, however. In addition to equipment for treating grey water and collecting rainwater, a dual distribution system is required, with one system delivering reclaimed water and rainwater and another supplying tap water. Currently, as a part of the Ministry of Education’s projects to provide sustainable water resources on campuses, more than 30 universities are working on such systems, which have become a standard feature of “green buildings” both in Taiwan and abroad. Since 2000, the Ministry of the Interior has promoted a certification system for such buildings. As one of the first countries in the world to officially evaluate the “greenness” of buildings and to make some green standards mandatory for new structures, Taiwan has seen the construction of about 300 certified green buildings, mostly public ones, which together save millions of metric tons of water each year.

In the industrial sector, which consumes about 9 percent of the nation’s supply of conventional water, conservation efforts are also paying off. According to the National Council for Sustainable Development, average water consumption for each NT$100 million (US$3 million) in production value for the manufacturing sector dropped from more than 35,000 cubic meters in 1998 to 16,000 cubic meters in 2006.

Taiwan’s high-tech electronics industry–a leading global supplier of semiconductors, integrated circuit chips and flat panel monitors–has made a large-scale effort to conserve water. “Water use is crucial for high-tech development and has drawn much attention from the government and the companies themselves,” TWEA’s Chiou says. TWEA established an office for promoting industrial water recycling in 2007, with funding provided by the WRA. Water consumption by flat panel manufacturers in the Huaya Technology Park in Taoyuan County, for example, dropped from 3.36 metric tons of water for each square meter of panel produced in 2003 to 0.93 metric tons in 2006. Over the same period, the water recycling rate for the Huaya panel makers rose from 75 to 85 percent.

Currently, the overall wastewater recycling rate for all of Taiwan’s industries is around 60 percent, with the rate expected to rise to 65 percent by 2011, according to TWEA. While the recycling rate in some older industrial areas falls below this average, newer manufacturing centers built under stricter environmental standards point the way toward the future. The Central Taiwan Science Park, which was established in 2002 in Taichung and Yunlin counties, boasts an overall water recycling rate of 85 percent. The park itself possesses advanced water-treatment facilities, and individual companies are also required to construct their own recycling systems.

“For older industrial areas, installation and improvement of water recycling and relevant distribution systems are among the top requirements when potential renovation projects are examined,” the WRA’s Joses Wu says. The agency’s deputy director-general points out that a major, pressing task is to establish more model treatment plants around Taiwan in order to gradually build user confidence in treated water. The Futien sewage treatment plant in Taichung City offers an example of how such model plants can earn the trust of local industry. Dragon Steel Corp. in Taichung will begin drawing water from Futien this year, mainly for cooling products during the manufacturing process. The process does not require water to be treated to the same degree as that used to process electronic products. Dragon Steel will benefit from a stable suppy of reclaimed water, and if no problems arise, other manufacturers are expected to follow suit.

Agricultural Inefficiency

As for the agricultural sector, which consumes about 71 percent of all water used in Taiwan, the major issue is the amount of unused water that passes through irrigation systems, eventually emptying into rivers and then the ocean. “Around 5 billion metric tons of water just flows away each year,” the TWEA’s Chiou Ren-jie says. For decades, the rights to water used for agriculture have been held by 18 irrigation associations around Taiwan. An institutional legacy from the time of Japan’s colonial rule (1895-1945), these associations are nominally under the administration of the government’s Council of Agriculture, but they function independently and are strongly influenced by local politics.

One possible way to better utilize the unused water controlled by the irrigation associations is to recast the associations as water suppliers such as the existing Taiwan Water Corp. or the Taipei Water Department. The WRA’s Wu says that this would have the effect of making the distribution of irrigation water more efficient. The unused water could then be sold to other users including local governments, industries and farmers not formally affiliated with irrigation associations.

TIER’s Chou Chang-erh points out that the government is going about developing pluralistic water sources in the right way, but there is much more still to be done. Among other things, Chou says more subsidies and tax incentives should be offered to providers and users of wastewater treatment services, as well as to those who purchase water saving devices. She adds that integrated distribution pipelines for freshwater, wastewater and reclaimed water should also be constructed.

Another priority is the formulation of guidelines governing the treatment levels for different categories of water. “You must decide whether to make wastewater drinkable or undrinkable,” Chou says. She realizes, however, that the public must also be convinced of the safety of drinking treated water. “Even if wastewater is treated so it’s drinkable, will anybody want to drink it?” she asks.

Clearly, there is more work to be done in the areas of water conservation and recycling, but it is also clear that if nothing is done, Taiwan could be a much thirstier place as soon as 2021.

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com

(Original Article Here)