Analyze

The first section of the presentation focuses on the use of artificial intelligence to improve manufacturing and reduce carbon emissions (see 2019 report). Formosa's efforts go back to 2017, when the company was one of five business that each invested NT$30million in the creation of Taiwan’s first AI Academy, initiated by scholars at Academia Sinica (see also Lin 2018). According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “[t]he academy has drawn faculty from scholarly institutions ranging from Taiwan’s major universities to foreign research institutes, Academia Sinica and the Industrial Technology Research Institute, as well as from the corporate sphere, with AI managers and entrepreneurs coming in to share their real-world AI experience.” Further, they state that by 2020, FPG had trained over 100 workers through courses offered by the academy.

Slides 37-55 outline FPG's current carbon capture system in Kaoshiung and its future plans for CCS systems in Mailiao, including an experimental system of biodegradable carbon capture. These initiatives, largely through Formosa Smart Energy Corp. also attempt to use AI models to regulate carbon capture for optimal production. 

See slides 40-42 for new initiatives on carbon capture. They list plans to build deep water carbon capture pits, being sited in Yunlin as of 9.2022.

The carbon capture system they have in place at Nanya seems to have reduced the amount of naptha necessary to manufacture butyl ether, a chemical used in solvents and pesticides, through reinjection of that carbon dioxide into source feedstocks (Enhanced Oil Recovery).

“國際碳捕捉技術發展

依據全球碳捕捉與封存研究所(Global CCS Institute, CCSI)最新發布之「2022年全球碳捕捉與

封存發展現況報告(The Global Status Of CCS 2022)」，⾄2022年全球共有30個⼤型CCS綜合

專案已經營運，其中有22個採⾏強制採油技術(Enhanced oil recovery, EOR)，利⽤⼆氧化碳灌

注⾄快枯竭的油氣⽥，獲取更多殘存油氣，以增加效益，其餘8個專案封存於陸地或海洋深層

鹽⽔層，顯示現階段應⽤仍以EOR技術為主，除可減少碳排外，更可增加獲利。

自動翻譯

 Capture Technology Development

According to the "2022 Global Carbon Capture and Storage Storage Development Status Report“ (The Global Status Of CCS 2022), by 2022 there will be 30 large CCS comprehensive

The projects are already in operation, and 22 of them adopt enhanced oil recovery (EOR), using carbon dioxide irrigation. Inject into the depleted oil and gas to obtain more residual oil and gas to increase efficiency, and the remaining 8 projects are sealed in land or deep ocean

The salt water layer shows that the current application is still dominated by EOR technology, which can not only reduce carbon emissions, but also increase profits.” (Slide 38)

Heavy reliance on technosolutions to reach emission reduction and climate goals. Shift from oil as fuel to oil as material. Cooperation between industry, academic, and technical research organizations to research new carbon capture systems. Longevity of the petrochemical industry within climate politics is a high priority for FPG, but also the efficiency of petrochemical inputs. Climate change action is being pursued, but more so in capture of carbon emitted and repurposed within chemical reactions, as opposed to omitted through reductions in production

test 

Protests to demand inclusion as project-affected people

Oppositional mobilizations - “internal to the logic of the project” p153 - so people do not consider something less damaging to the land and animals or a way to do it with less extraction of resources and profit for elite people in Kathmandu or in Europe/the US/China who do not really have to bear any of the cost of it. 

The author thinks that information circulated about the shareholder model - financial education - would be helpful - he notes that it would have to be oversimplified and made into financial narratives even though it is a complex socioenvironmental decisions. But his final conclusion is more optimistic. I think this kind of corporate-led education is a big foreclosure.

The certifications, following through with trainings that were asked for, and doing the certification ceremony for an audience

Rhetoric of benefit-sharing

The high levels of buy-in; the quotes from locals themselves supporting the dam and the company, they can honestly boast strong local support of the projects - what better proof than that people have dug up their life savings from the ground to buy the stocks?

The corporate actors aren’t particularly fleshed out in this account. The World Bank people weren’t expecting the Nepalese people to come deliver demands in a very educated and efficient way 

Ah there was one part where the corporate actors feel like the Nepalese people who live near the dam sites are extorting them - in this case they don’t feel like they’re helping but rather conceding to unreasonable demands, the poor corporation has to be the government and the villagers have these crazy ideas about how much money the corporation has (the corporation does have the money… it’s extremely ironic)

We don’t get to know how the corporate actors feel about the shareholder model - do they begrudge the shares not being sold to their family or something like that, or do they recognize that this is really also a sharing of risk and cost, more than just being pure benefits in a ‘help’ way?

Power outages and material scarcity → moral and social authority for government and corps to act quickly - “Discursive momentum”

Hydropower has been reframed as a sustainable/green energy source, esp. With carbon finance, so now institutions like the World Bank are funding it - it is a responsible way to bring about development. In Nepal, the government is also trying to declare Nepal as “open to business” - the ethical thing to do is to let corporations in to build hydropower dams 

Local people are there with them - some people say they are willing to have their houses submerged, the government is the unethical party for blocking the development from happening - the quote from someone is ‘some foreign country should get Nepal and develop it’ (Rest 2012:113), p151 here.

This text has a lot on governance:

More people bought shares during Chilime Hydropower Company public offering in 2010 than voted in the recent national elections in that more remote district. 

“Hydropower is our government now” - p150 - there is a “vacuum of governance” - so “hydropower sector has become a major political force in its own right, at both the national and local scales, adn investment in the hydropower sector is seen as a bellwether of political stability. The Nepalese state is reforming alongside the political economy of hydropower - the production of the hydropower future ensures the economic and political coherence of the state, and vice versa” - p150 - hydropower sector and Nepalese government are mutually constructive

P151 - “role of hydropower companies seems to rival or eclipse the role of government as a provider of social services…” So when people get classified as project-affected they finally get services that the government has failed to provide - better entitlements, faster, more promising recognition. The corporations even complain about being treated as the government: “To them we are the government, they give us all their demands” p151

Not just the corporation, but “industry beholden to donor standards and international conventions is a much more effective” p152

“Neoliberal spaces of exception” - so the state has made a lot of exceptions and ceded a lot of power to the corps (this isn’t directly CSR) 

Corps can make competing territorial claims - people who are project-affected “now attempt to make claims as project-affected people with rights, based on the architecture of international conventions and agreements”  p153

P155 - the corporation collected data to determine who would qualify as “project-affected” - it was more detailed and recent than the census - they provided this data to the local government - the corporation made not only eligibility determinations but also about what counts as living there and what documents are good enough as proof

Villagers have specifically requested cooking classes for Chinese and European food because they expect the infrastructure to bring tourists. And they did indeed get the cooking classes - there was a ceremony to certify the women who did the 2 week class, they wore traditional Tamang clothes. 

“Shareholder model” - also known as “benefit sharing” - “local” people who are categorized by the company as “project-affected” have 10% of shares reserved for them. This model was also the result of a court case - the shares are typically sold to the people that Nepali politicians are friendly with, so an alliance of people living near where the dam was being constructed demanded a share of the benefits. And presumably, the Colonial country where the hydropower company is based, in the frequent cases where the company is international, gets a very healthy chunk of the 90% of unreserved stock. 

People are familiar with the logics of CSR and mobilize to get their demands - efficiently deliver their demands when they know world bank officials are coming. 

“People-public-private-partnership” - another way to describe it.