Taiwan is accelerating its municipal-to-industrial water reuse and desalination programmes in a bid to strengthen resilience in the face of increasingly damaging climate hazards. In light of growing demand from a progressively sophisticated chip-making industry - where process nodes are decreasing in size to 3nm and below, requiring more water to produce - municipal water supplies will be safeguarded with the development of 650,000m~3/d of seawater desalination capacity. First proposed in 2012, Taiwan has expanded its municipal wastewater reuse list from an initial six pilots to eleven projects, aiming to reach a combined capacity of 334,000m~3/d by 2026 under a TWD17 billion ($612 million) national scheme (see map, below right). Only four projects to date have achieved practical progress, however: one under operation (Fengshan) and three contracted (Linhai, Yongkang, Anping), with the rest proceeding at a slow pace, mainly hindered by two factors. Industrial end-users have a lack of incentives to purchase recycled water, which comes at a cost of two to three times Taiwan's average drinking water tariff of around $0.40/m~3. And in some cases, local governments are struggling with the hefty investment required to build long-distance pipelines to distribute the treated sewage to users that are willing to meet the cost of the treated water.
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