President Ma Ying-jeou met on the morning of April 10 with a delegation led by Professor Shuji Nakamura, the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. In addition to expressing his admiration for Professor Nakamura's outstanding achievements in the field of physics, the president also explained the Taiwan LED industry's current state of development.
In remarks, the president stated that Professor Nakamura is regarded as the "Father of Blue LED," the inventor of high-brightness blue-light emitting diodes and blue-violet laser diodes. Professor Nakamura has made remarkable achievements in LED research, and in 2014 his invention of high-brightness LEDs led to the development of energy-saving bright white-light sources. Professor Nakamura, together with Professor Isamu Akasaki and Professor Hiroshi Amano, won the Nobel Prize in Physics, the highest honor in academic circles for their achievements. Professor Nakamura, the president said, has been responsible for many outstanding inventions that have helped lead to a revolution in lighting technology throughout the world. President Ma mentioned that aside from Thomas Edison's invention of the electric light, Professor Nakamura's contributions have been second to none in terms of lighting innovation.
Discussing the current state of the ROC's LED industry, the president said the first LED packaging and assembly line here was established in 1972, and the industry has continuously progressed since then, with development continuing from downstream industries through upstream industries. From the early days of LED packaging and assembly, Taiwan has gradually expanded into the production of mid-stream components and upstream epitaxial wafers and LED chips. After over two decades of effort, Taiwan has established a comprehensive LED production supply chain, and LEDs have become one of the most competitive products produced by Taiwan in the optoelectronic industry, he said.
The president stated that Taiwan has become the world's largest supplier of downstream packaged and assembled visible-light LEDs, and the brightness of LEDs produced here also leads the world. Also worth mentioning is that the production value of Taiwan's LED industry is the third largest in the world, behind only Japan and the United States. The president cited statistics indicating that the output value of Taiwan's optoelectronic industry in 2014 was US$67.4 billion, good for a 12% global market share. And this year, the output value of Taiwan's LED component industry is expected to maintain a 15% growth rate to reach US$5.4 billion. This shows that Taiwan has become an important hub for the world's optoelectronic industry, the president said.
The president commented that Taiwan is not only a global center for LED production, the government is also encouraging the public to turn to LED lighting in order to conserve energy and reduce carbon emissions. In November of last year, the Executive Yuan announced that it intends to spend NT$5.49 billion over the next two years to replace mercury-vapor streetlamps throughout Taiwan. Under that project, assistance will be provided to local governments to replace all of Taiwan's 692,000 mercury-vapor lamps with LED lamps. Upon completion of this project, the government anticipates energy savings of 640 million kilowatt hours annually, which will reduce CO2 emissions by 320,000 tons. The ROC, he said, will also become the world's first nation to completely replace all of its mercury-vapor streetlamps.
The president went on to say that LEDs are an important item in the ROC's overseas humanitarian assistance efforts, pointing out that the Light from Taiwan project implemented by the ROC in Africa has been quite a success. The president recalled that on a visit to Burkina Faso in 2012, he enquired about the use of the solar-powered lamps donated by the ROC to local students and learned that schoolchildren were able to use the lamps to complete their homework at night and that the lamps also aided housewives in doing their housework. The president stated that he was extremely pleased to hear from teachers that the performance of those students has improved as a result.
The president stressed that the optoelectronic industry is the pride of Taiwan and that the development of this industry is important to the nation's economic growth. He expressed hope that academics here involved in research and development in the optoelectronic industry will be able to interact with Professor Nakamura and his colleagues during their visit, thereby enhancing cooperative relations between the academic and industrial sectors from Taiwan and the United States in state of the art technology.
The delegation also included Professors Steven P. DenBaars and Tal Margalith from the University of California, Santa Barbara.