D. Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
4. Threats
The most important threat that piezoelectric technology has to face is that, in general, the community does not know about this technology, reducing the willingness of people and companies to invest on it, and due to globally it is not a frequent topic, it tends to generate a wrong concept of the piezoelectric.
Similarly, solar and wind technology is a global tendency, attracting the attention of investors and companies instead of piezoelectric, but also, the price of one kilowatt-hour produced through solar or wind energy is much more affordable than the kilowatt-hour produced with piezoelectric tiles.
52 5. Outline SWOT
Table 12 summarize the relevant information of the SWOT Analysis, moreover, it also is possible to see different strategies to adopt.
Table 12.SWOT Analysis.
Internal Factors
External Factors
Strengths
1. It is an innovative product to produce clean energy.
1. Produces energy and also generates data from
2. Price per kilowatt-hour of other technologies.
S-T Strategies
1. Make aware people about the benefits of using clean
1. Research the progress of technology and determine if the cost of its
production is decreasing.
53
F. PEST Analysis
In the current section, the political, economic, social, and technological factors will be analyzed.
1. Political Factors
Taiwan’s government-appointed to the Bureau of Energy (BOE) to be the authority in charge of energy policy on the island, this government agency stated, the most important is to establish a liberal, orderly, efficient, sustainable, and clean energy supply and demand system.
Through this statement, it opens the possibility of promoting and incentivizing the use of new technologies to generate clean electric power.
The strategies of the Bureau of Energy include stabilizing the energy supply; increasing energy efficiency; deregulating the energy market; emphasizing energy security and environmental protection; enhancing energy research and development; and promoting energy education.
In 2008, the Ministry of Economic Affairs released the Framework of Taiwan’s Sustainable Energy Policy. The framework presents a “win-win-win” solution for addressing problems related to energy and the environment. It talks about the limitations that Taiwan faces in terms of its insufficient natural resources and limited environmental carrying capacity. It states that sustainable energy policies should support the efficient use of the economy’s limited energy resources, the development of clean energy, and the security of the energy supply.
Taiwan wants to generate 20 percent of its electricity through renewable energy by 2025, and it wants to address it expanding the share of clean energy and improving energy efficiency,
54
what in turn, it will be reflected in low carbon energy in electricity generation. To summarize, Taiwan looks for:
1. Green energies: to decrease dependence on fossil fuels and imported energy
2. High efficiency: to increase energy consumption and energy transformation efficiency.
3. Low emissions: to adopt energy supply methods and consumption practices that ensure low carbon emissions.
The Taiwan government through the Renewable Energy Development Act and related regulations, and in order to promote the development of renewable energy and encourage the establishment of enterprises in renewable energy-based power generation, releases a variety of incentives.
1. Feed-in tariffs
2. Demonstration awards and subsidies 3. Tax incentives
4. Green Finance Action Plan
As we can see, the government of Taiwan provides many incentives to companies or people interested in developing or setting green energies in order to reduce carbon emissions and also to provide a grade more of reliability to the energy mix. Based on that information, piezoelectric technology fits in all the requirements to apply for the incentives that the government provides.
2. Economic Factors
In Chapter Four, we discussed the cost of installing piezoelectric tiles in Kaohsiung Arena MRT Station, nevertheless, the cost per Pavegen tile is still under discussion, since the exact price
55
was not found, however, the CEO of the company stated in 2018 that one square meter of Pavegen tile costs around £ 500 pounds sterling and in the upcoming years it will be around £100 pounds sterling. So we considered the two possible scenarios with both prices to develop the study.
Table 13.Comparison of prices Piezoelectricity and Thermal Energy.
Scenario 1 Scenario 2 The total price of tiles arrangement [US dollars] $ 9,300 $ 1,870 Price per kWh in lifetime [US dollars] $ 1.76 $ 0.35 Price per kWh of Thermal Energy-2019 [US dollars] $ 0.129 Total energy generated in lifetime-20 years 5,292.5 kWh
The obtained result is that the kilowatt per hour generated with this technology in both scenarios is more expensive than the one generated with conventional energies as we can check in Table 13. Also, the amount of energy is not that significant that the one that can be generated with other types of green technology such as wind or solar energy.
To determine how convenient is installing piezoelectric is necessary to consider other variables.
3. Social Factors
The main purpose of installing piezoelectric is to generate clean energy and reduce the electricity bill of the MRT station, however, it also is expected that it will promote people's sustainability awareness. Some experiments were conducted in other countries showed that people show interest in this technology, and being part of it, with a simple thing just like giving a step can change the behavior of the people and also curiosity about the way this kind of technology operates.
Pedestrians will also realize that every single thing can have a big impact on the achievement of sustainability, which will also inspire some people to develop and do research
56
about technologies under the same working principle of Pavegen tiles or even find out other innovative ways to generate energy.
There are also some things to consider, Pavegen generates energy from footsteps without the consent of people, also the tiles can generate data and, when is combine real-time footfall data with analytics, it can create powerful insights into the behaviors of people interacting with the systems.
4. Technological Factors
Here we will consider the technology adoption life cycle, it is shown in Figure 29, which explains how consumers embrace new products and services.
Figure 29. Technology adoption life cycle. (Chew, 2017)
The amount of energy that a single Pavegen tile can generate is low, and if we consider the price, it turns out to be expensive, and even more when we compare it with other green technologies. The piezoelectric tile is a technology that was adopted not long time ago, and it is still growing.
However, it has demonstrated that it can be a complement to diversify the energy mix and also to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Besides, the technology provides an educative awareness
57
to all the passengers of their responsibility in combating climate change and safeguards the environment locally and globally. This long-term high-impact educational awareness is priceless.
(Chew, 2017)
Once the price of piezoelectric tile goes down, and companies enhance the efficiency of it, it might be a good solution to produce clean electricity and be spread in the community.
58
Chapter Five: Concluding Remarks
A. Major Contributions
Piezoelectric tiles arise as a new alternative to be considered in order to diversify the energy mix of Taiwan and worldwide, however, it is a technology that needs more research to reduce the manufacturing cost and increase the tiles efficiency in terms of energy production per step.
Taiwan and Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corporation have to evaluate the technology from different points of view, in terms of economy, Pavegen tiles are not feasible to be implemented, it due to the payback is longer than the lifetime of the tiles, and this conclusion applies for scenario 1 and scenario 2. Nevertheless, if Taiwan and Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corporation take into account other aspects, they can consider this technology as an alternative to producing clean electricity, because the energy generated by the daily activity of people in some crowded areas in cities will allow reducing the contamination levels.
When we compare the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of the whole country, with the reduction of it using piezoelectric as the current study shows, the figure might seem insignificant, but if the use of the technology spreads over the country in places with the highest traffic of pedestrians, such as night markets, airports, or others MRT Stations with much more passengers than Kaohsiung Arena MRT Station, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will be important.
However, to get the best performance of piezoelectric tiles, there is an important requirement that must be accomplished, it is to identify the most optimal place to locate the slabs because then we can get the maximum power of the tiles.
59
Also, implementing this solution will bring social advantages, the most important is that it will create awareness in the community about sustainable environment. To conclude, even though installing piezoelectric carries a high cost, and in the economic aspect, economic losses can be generated, in overall the using piezoelectric to generate energy brings more positive aspects than negatives.
B. Major Suggestions
The current study has generated some suggestions.
Despite the fact, Taiwan imports 98,06% of energy due to its limited natural resources, and an important share of it is destined to electricity consumption, the kilowatt per hour of electricity is inexpensive, in order to promote the use of green energies Taiwan should increase the price of the kilowatt per hour produced with fossil energies, just like this, new green technologies like piezoelectric can be considered and diversify the energy mix.
Taiwan is a small island, it means, it lacks land. Currently, the country is investing a lot in wind farms and solar parks, however, is important not to saturate the island with this technologies, on the other hand, technologies like piezoelectric, just need to be located on the existing floor of the crowded places and it does not occupy a large space nor does it intervene in people’s daily life.
It would be important if the government releases programs to make people aware of new technologies and allow people to interact with it. About piezoelectric tiles, making a small installation to show its working principle and the changes that this kind of technology can achieve, will help to create awareness in the citizenry
C. Limitations of the Study
The current study had some limitations, bellow they will be exposed.
60
1. This is a feasibility study, and it was developed considering that the maximum power would be extracted from the tiles. It means we assumed the weight of every passenger would be between 60 to 70 kg.
2. It was considered that the daily amount of passengers that the station holds, and the amount of passengers in the next 20 years, is the same and it will not change.
3. It was not possible to get the exact price of the tiles, so we assumed two possible scenarios considering what the CEO of Pavegen stated in 2018.
4. In the study, it was not possible to know the installed electrical capacity of the station, so we calculated based on data such as the amount of energy Kaohsiung Metro Company consumed and the number of stations.
D. Future Studies
Piezoelectric is an interesting technology that takes advantage of the kinetic energy to generate electricity, based on this premise some future studies can be developed in Taiwan.
1. It is important to consider this sort of technology in other environments with a large influx of people such as airports or night markets. In Taiwan night markets are places that hold an important amount of people per day, and unlike metro stations, people walk through the same place many times, it means the amount of footsteps per person is higher and the amount of generated energy will increase considerably.
2. Different sorts of vehicles are in constant motion over highways and important avenues or streets in Taiwan, considering piezoelectric to produce energy from the vehicles could be an important development in the future.
61
3. Piezoelectric is not limited only to tiles, this type of sensor can be adapted in many places such as wind turbines or even buildings, going further will help to diversify the energy mix of Taiwan and reduce its fossil fuel dependence.
62
Appendix
63
64
References
Amable, T. (2018, May 15). The Importance of a PESTEL Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.girlfridayz.com/post/the-importance-of-a-pestel-analysis
Australian Renewable Energy Agency. (2020, May 2). Renewable Energy. Retrieved from https://arena.gov.au/what-is-renewable-energy/
Bekzhanova, Z. (2019). The Application of Piezoelectric Technology for Human Energy Harvesting in Korea and Kazakhstan. ResearchGate.
Blaabjerg, F. (2017). Wind Energy Systems. IEEE Xplore, 2116 - 2131.
Boby, K. (2014). Footstep Power Generation Using Piezo Electric Transducers. International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT), 264-267.
Boughton, P. (2013, March 26th). Engineerlive. Retrieved from
https://www.engineerlive.com/content/power-and-potential-piezoelectric-energy-harvesting Bureau of Energy. (2019). Energy Statistics.
Chang, S.-l. (2012). Taiwan's Energy Conundrum. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 4.
Chew, B. C. (2017). Feasibility of piezoelectric tiles adoption: A case study at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Malaysia. AIP Conference Proceedings 1818.
Creately. (2018, September 19th). SWOT Analysis and PEST Analysis – When to Use Them. Retrieved from https://creately.com/blog/diagrams/swot-analysis-vs-pest-analysis/
Dyson, R. G. (2004). Strategic development and SWOT analysis at the University of Warwick. European journal of operational research, 631-640.
E.Toklu. (2017). Biomass energy potential and utilization in Turkey. Science Direct, 235-244.
Economy of Taiwan. (2019, October 08). Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Taiwan
Elhalwagy, A. M. (2017). Feasibility Study for Using Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Floor in Buildings' Interior Spaces. ScienceDirect, 114-126.
Energy Information Agency. (2019, December 04). EIA. Retrieved from Waste-to-energy (Municipal Solid Waste): https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/biomass/waste-to-energy.php
EnergySage. (2019, October 05). EnergySage. Retrieved from How do solar panels work?:
https://news.energysage.com/solar-panels-work/
Folk, E. (2020, March 05). Renewable Energy Magazine. Retrieved from Waste in the Renewable Energy Industry and How We Can Sustainably Power Our World:
https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/emily-folk/waste-in-the-renewable-energy-
industry-and-65
20200305#:~:text=Renewable%20energy%2C%20such%20as%20solar,environment%20and%20 affect%20human%20health.&text=With%20technology%20such%20as%20waste,energy%20fro m%
Frue, K. (2016, June 06). PESTLE Analysis. Retrieved from The Advantages of PESTLE Analysis:
https://pestleanalysis.com/advantages-of-pestle-analysis/
Garimella, R. C. (2015). Piezo- An Approach to Generate Electricity from Vibrations. Science Direct, 445-456.
General Electric. (2020). What is Wind Power? Retrieved from GE Renewable Energy:
https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/what-is-wind-energy Global Petrol Prices. (2019). Taiwan fuel prices, electricity prices. Retrieved from
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Taiwan/
Government Portal of the Republic of China (Taiwan). (n.d.). Taiwan.gov. Retrieved from https://www.taiwan.gov.tw/content_7.php
Himpler, J.-P. (2018). The World Financial Crisis: Impacts on GDP and International Trade in Taiwan.
IntechOpen.
International Energy Agency. (2020, May 01). IEA. Retrieved from Data and Statistics:
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics?country=TAIPEI&fuel=Key%20indicators&indicator=CO2%20emissions%20per%20capit a
IRENA. (2020). International Renewable Energy Agency. Retrieved from Hydropower:
http://irena.org/hydropower
Kabir, E. (2018). Solar energy: Potential and future prospects. Science Direct, 894-900.
Kaohsiung Metro. (2020, June 16). Kaohsiung Arena Station Information. Retrieved from KRTC:
https://www.krtc.com.tw/eng/Guide/station_plan?id=a1c06bb703254457aca99dc4075d935a#a rticleBox
Kaohsiung Rapid Transport Corp. (2018). Annual Report Metro Kaohsiung. Kaohsiung: Chien-Sheng, Hao.
Knowles, K. (2018, March 27). The Tesla Of Smart Cities? Pavegen's On A £5m Mission To Supercharge Your Sidewalks. Retrieved from Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kittyknowles/2018/03/27/the-tesla-of-smart-cities-inside-pavegens-5m-mission-to-supercharge-your-sidewalks/#28c7e7a15c00
Kumar, Y. (2016). Wind energy: Trends and enabling technologies. Science Direct, 209-224.
Laumann, F. (2017). Energy harvesting through piezoelectricity - technology foresight. ScienceDirect, 3062-3068.
Laws & Regulations Database of the Republic of China. (2019, May 01). Renewable Energy Development Act. Retrieved from https://law.moj.gov.tw/Eng/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?PCODE=J0130032
66
Lu, W.-C. (2016, December 30). Electricity Consumption and Economic Growth: Evidence from 17 Taiwanese Industries. Sustainability.
Mashaleh, B. A. (2018). Power Generation Using Piezoelectric Materials. Research Gate.
McEntee, F. (2020). Sustain Europe. Retrieved from How Green is Hydropower?:
https://www.sustaineurope.com/how-green-is-hydropower-20180229.html MindTools. (n.d.). Mindtools. Retrieved from Using the TOWS Matrix:
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_89.htm
Mundo-Hernández, J. (2014). An overview of solar photovoltaic energy in Mexico and Germany. Science Direct, 639-649.
National Geographic. (2013, February 21). National Geographic. Retrieved from Non-renewable energy:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/non-renewable-energy/#:~:text=Non%2Drenewable%20energy%20comes%20from%20sources%20that%20will
%20run%20out,main%20element%20in%20fossil%20fuels.
Office of Nuclear Energy. (2020, May 19). NUCLEAR 101: How Does a Nuclear Reactor Work? Retrieved from NUCLEAR 101: How Does a Nuclear Reactor Work?:
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-101-how-does-nuclear-reactor-work
Parsons, N. (2018, April 05). LivePlan. Retrieved from What Is a SWOT Analysis, and How to Do It Right (With Examples): https://www.liveplan.com/blog/what-is-a-swot-analysis-and-how-to-do-it-right-with-examples/
PeterMcKendry. (2002). Energy production from biomass (part 1): overview of biomass. Science Direct, 37-46.
Phadermrod, B. (2016). Importance-Performance Analysis based SWOT. International Journal of Information Management.
QuickMBA. (n.d.). QuickMBA. Retrieved from A SWOT Analysis:
http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/swot/
Safaei, M. (2019). A review of energy harvesting using piezoelectric materials: state-of-the-art a decade later (2008-2018). IOP Science.
Solban, M. M. (2019). Piezoelectric Tiles Is a Sustainable Approach for Designing. IOP Conf. Series: Earth and Environmental Science 397 012020. El Cairo: IOP Publishing.
Srdjevic, Z. (2012). Identifying the Criteria Set for Multicriteria Decision Making Based on SWOT/PESTLE Analysis: A Case Study of Reconstructing A Water Intake Structure. Springer Link, 3379–3393.
Taiwan News. (2020, 02 27). Taiwan to boost renewable energy to 20% by 2025, introduce trillion-dollar investment.
The World Bank. (2018, October 03). Energy-Overwiew. Retrieved from The World Bank:
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/energy/overview#1
67
Trading Economics. (n.d.). Trading Economics. Retrieved from https://tradingeconomics.com/taiwan/gdp
United States Environmental Protection Agency. (2020, March). Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. Retrieved from Energy and the Environment:
https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator
VasconcelosSampaio, P. G. (2017). Photovoltaic solar energy: Conceptual framework. Science Direct, 590-601.
Wikipedia. (2020). Wikipedia. Retrieved from Liquefied natural gas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_natural_gas#:~:text=Liquefied%20natural%20gas%20(L NG)%20is,non%2Dpressurized%20storage%20or%20transport.
Wikipedia. (2020, June 14). Wikipedia. Retrieved from Kaohsiung:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaohsiung
World Nuclear Association. (2020). World Nuclear Association. Retrieved from Where does our electricity come from?: https://www.world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/where-does-our-
electricity-come-from.aspx#:~:text=Coal%2C%20gas%20and%20oil&text=In%202017%2C%20fossil%20fuels%20g enerated%2064.5%25%20of%20electricity%20worldwide.,dioxide%2C%20which%20drives%20cl imate%20c
Yang, C. E. (2016, September 16). Electronic Design. Retrieved from What is the Piezoelectric Effect?:
https://www.electronicdesign.com/power-management/article/21801833/what-is-the-piezoelectric-effect