With the increasing depletion of the earth’s resources, countries worldwide are more determined about green industrial policies. The European Commission adopted the New Circular Economy Action Plan this March. The UK, Japan, and China will draw up a “marine pollution map” in response to the “marine plastic crisis.” These show that the green industry has become a major field of study for human survival and reducing resource consumption. Therefore, the “Sustainability Pavilion” of the “2020 Taiwan Innotech Expo” focused on the green industrial chain. The core values are “sustainable living,” “sustainable energy,” and “sustainable resources” tied in with “new agriculture,” “green energy technology,” “circular economy,” and “workplace safety” that reflect the four aspects of life. The pavilion presented more than one hundred technologies that can build a sustainable home in the next ten to twenty years.
The circular economy technology ecosystem demonstrated by the circular technology island
The Sustainability Pavilion exhibited circular economy business models (recycle, redesign, etc.) that use circular technology and innovative circular inputs. They show Taiwan’s improvement in the effective use of resources and international industrial competitive advantage and also its transformation into a circular technology island. The pavilion highlights Taiwan’s potential circular technologies and applications. These include marine debris recycling, carbon capture, and design for disassembly solar panels for clean water, air, and sunlight. With circular technology applications, we can increase industrial competitive advantage and preserve natural resources for sustainable living on this island.
“Sustainable Living” Highlights
Photovoltaic agriculture and aquaculture (Council of Agriculture)
Photovoltaic agriculture and aquaculture can be categorized into “aquavoltaics” and “agrivoltaics.” The development of new photovoltaic aquaculture modules and models, the applications of new green energy aquaculture models, and an aquaculture model factory will be exhibited.
Workplace environment and physiologic monitoring technology (Ministry of Labor)
Workplace hazard alerts can be monitored in real-time with wearable environmental or physiologic monitoring devices: 1) Smart wireless gas sensor that can detect movement and gas concentration (O2, CO2, H2S, CH4). It can send wireless hazard information to remote surveillance personnel in real-time. It can also send wireless distress signals to shorten response time. 2) Overwork assessment device that can link the heart rate to the built-in sleep data, fatigue scale, and disease risk database to estimate the disease risk indicators and overall level and display them on the device. It can inform employers of employee health status, preventing overwork incidents.
“Sustainable Energy” Highlights
Grid-scale energy storage (Bureau of Energy)
Taiwan’s 2025 battery energy storage target is 590 MW. Grid-scale energy storage technology compensates for the insufficient capacity of current pumped-storage hydroelectricity and fast-reacting gas-fired equipment. The technology is mainly used for ancillary services of renewable energy and power systems. Two types of grid-scale energy storage technology will be presented: the “power battery” that can increase grid reliability and stability, and the “energy battery” that can harvest energy on a large-scale, increase renewable energy dispatchability, cut peaks and fill valleys, and transfer energy.
Kinmen smart grid (State-owned Enterprise Commission)
Diverse energy management technology that combines the “rapid intervention energy storage system” and “virtual power plant.” This series of systems are known as the “grid booster.”
Visualized GIS management system of local power distribution network (Atomic Energy Council)
The integration of real-time information from GIS and SCADA can help dispatchers quickly find feeder fault locations. Also, with the addition of program calculation of distribution power flow, it can be a reference for dispatch decisions to speed up troubleshooting and restore power supply, thereby improving feeder dispatch reliability and renewable energy management.
“Sustainable Resources” Highlights
Circular materials verification and matchmaking platform (Industrial Development Bureau)
This platform integrates and connects diverse ICTs. Through blockchain, IoT, and AI, it tracks the resource distribution, quality, and applications of circular materials. It also displays the logistics transport routes, real-time images, and quality data of circular materials on the cloud. This way, the records of materials from the source to applications are transparent, promoting a new circular economy model.
Recycling and reusing online shopping packages (Environmental Protection Administration)
Online shopping is booming in Taiwan, but the packing boxes have greatly burdened the environment. The highlight of the exhibition is the “package+ circular box.” It is a new model that recycles and reuses online shopping packages. The packages are made with recycled materials and are waterproof, anti-collision, and anti-theft. One package can be reused more than fifty times. Carbon emissions are reduced by about 1.2 kg with each use, and disposable online shopping packages are reduced by 300 g.
International Co-Marketing of New Agriculture
For the international exhibition, many countries, including France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Japan, and Malaysia, will participate in the Sustainability Pavilion. The exhibition combined European agriculture with Taiwan’s technology and experience and held several seminars to discuss the co-marketing and layout of alliance markets. The variety of innovative technologies and applications lied a strong foundation for sustainable new agriculture.
Event Details
Taiwan Innotech Expo 2020
Date: September 24 -26, 2020
Location: Taipei Word Trade Center Hall 1
Website: https://tie.twtm.com.tw/
Executive Unit (Organizer): Industrial Technology Research Institute
