Energy Transition in Taiwan

Energy Transition in Taiwan: The Overall Goal

Taiwan is ongoing its energy transition. The transiton will highlight a rapid growth of renewable electricity capacity and generation, but many other sectors such as transportation, building, and manufacture sectors will also be involved. The goal of this transition process is to ultimately meet Taiwan's own Intended National Determined Contribution published in 2015, which stated that compared to 2005, annual carbon emission should be reduced by 20% by 2030 and 50% by 2050. This is a reduction of about 53 Million tonnes of CO₂ eq by 2030 and 133 Million tonnes by 2050.

Compared to other East Asia countries, this goal is quite ambitious. For example, South Korea only promised to tame its annual carbon emission to around 535 Million tonnes of CO₂ eq by 2030, which is roughly the same level as 2005. However, many of the policy goals in Taiwan still lack integration between governmental departments and also concrete measures before 2020.

Energy Transition in Taiwan: Energy Sector

Nuclear Phaseout

Historically, nuclear power provided up to 50% of the electricity in the mid 1980s. Since then, its share in the electricity generation portfolio has gradually decreased, even without a phaseout plan. Between 2000 and 2014, nuclear provided around 20% of the electricity demand on the island.

As a neighbor of Japan and also located on the ring of fire, the public opposition of nuclear power in Taiwan grew significant after the Fukushima incident in 2011. The rally for a nuclear phaseout plan attracted some 200,000 people to go to the streets in 2013. Therefore by 2015, all major political parties that participated the president election in the following year promised to phase-out all existing nuclear power plants during their campaign.

Nuclear phaseout remains a consensus among the major parties in the parliament after 2016, even when some nuclear proponents continue to link the issues of grid management failures and industrial air pollution to the lack of nuclear power throughout the years.

Part of the reason why the policy remain highly consensus is because of the subtle geopolitical structure Taiwan currently has. The major opposition party, the KMT, have the most potential voters in the New Taipei City where strong anti-nuclear sentiments persist because of the 3 existing or planned nuclear power plants within. Meanwhile smaller progressive parties in the oppostion such as New Power Party have voters with higher environmental awareness in general, and of the 5 legislators New Power Party have, one also came out from New Taipei City. Similar as in Germany, there exists almost no political niche in Taiwan for any political faction to reverse the policy.

Like Germany, the phasing out of nuclear will be faster than the speed of renewables expansion in the early stage. This will cause a stagnate of carbon emission in electricity production before 2020, but it will also avoid the chances of having too much inflexible power plants online that would limit the power generation of variable renewables.

Renewable Capacity Expansion Plans

The following sources of renewable energy are planned to increase capacity significantly by 2025: solar, offshore wind, biogas, onshore wind, and geothermal. Below is a chart of the goals of expansion, adapted from Renewables are blooming; is the power system ready? A Prognosis on Residual Load Flexibility in Taiwan by 2025.

Type of Renewables	Current Capacity (as of 15.11.2017)	Planned Capacity by 2025
Solar	1.286GW	20GW
Onshore Wind	0.682GW	1.2GW
Offshore Wind	0.136GW	5.5GW
Biogas	0.741GW	0.813GW
Geothermal	0GW	0.2GW

Coal and Carbon Emission

The goal of short term carbon emission reduction in the energy sector is to be tamed at around 32.305 MtCO2e by 2020, which would be roughly the same as in 2005 (but slightly increased when compared to 2015)​. The total carbon emissions of electricity in Taiwan is planned to peak in 2017 at 271 Million tonnes CO₂ eq, and reduced to 239 Million tonnes CO₂ eq.

In the recent years, coal use in electrcity generation stagnates at around 45%. The government promised that the share of coal use in electricty generation peaks in 2017, and by 2020 it will be tamed to no more than 43%.

In the mid term, the goal of renewable sources in electricity generation share is 20% by 2025. Meanwhile, coal use is to be reduced to 30%, compared to 45% in 2016. The carbon emission intensity of electricity generation is to be reduced from 0.529 kg CO₂ eq/kWh in 2016 to 0.394 kg CO₂ eq/kWh by 2025.

To reduce coal use, many existing coal power plants will be turned to gas power plants, and hard coal power plants are expected to operate more flexibly in the future.

Prognosis of Residual Load and Re-dispatchment Schemes

According to the International Energy Agency, there are four phases of integrating variable renewables onto the grid. With about 1% of electricity generated by solar and wind, Taiwan is currently in the first phase, when grid integration is still not a major problem for renewable energy sources.

However, if 20GW of solar is installed as planned by 2025, the residual load curve will change drastically and Taiwan will enter phase two of VRE integration. By then, conventional power plants will have to vary their output accordingly. Also, the risk of congestion in transmission lines must be analyze beforehand, and weak spots in the power system must be strengthened in prior.

Below is the power output curve a possible re-dispatchment scheme may result to by summer 2025.The hard coal power plants might have to ramp more flexibly inthe future in order to adjust to the residual load variations, and this result to a reduction of coal use to around 26% in this scenario. The carbon emission intensity in this scenario was 0.396 kg CO₂ eq/kWh, very close to the policy goal.

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While wind power is weaker in summer, it will be more stronger in winter. Since the solar radiation in southern Taiwan remains strong even in winter, the first negative residaul load events would probably happen in winter. By then Taiwan would have to start dealing with phase three problems described by IEA. As an isolated island, Taiwan will not be able to export electricity surplus during these events; this, however, doesn't imply that it is impossible for an island to reach and go beyond phase three. Many islands with inadaquate interconnections such as Ireland or Hawaii has already been dealing with challenges of this phase.

Energy Transition in Taiwan: Transportation Sector

The Taiwanese government has pledged to ban the sell of combustion engine motorcycles by 2035 and cars by 2040. This will be done by the electrification of the sector. Recent studies from energy policies experts and power system operators showed the impact of this electrification to electricity demand is very limited (less than 6% of current value), but if well implemented it will increase the flexibility of the power system as a whole (since parking electric vechicles can be a potential storage option).

In the short term, diesel engine vehicles will be the very first to be regulated and banned. In the local level, some cities are already banning these vehicles the right to access certain areas.

Energy Transition in Taiwan: Building Sector

Energy efficiency will be highly promoted in the building sector. For example, governmental buildings are usually ill-performed regarding its energy usage intensity, and the governmental goal is to improve the efficiency of these buildings such that they perform in line with the official EUI standards. New constructions will also face stricter energy efficiency requirements. Overall, the planned short term carbon emission reduction in this sector is greater than those in electricity, transportation, and manufature sectors.

However, energy experts and building energy analysts criticized the lack of concrete implementation regarding this sector, and doubt if the goals can truly be achieved. Governmental faculties contribute only a small fraction of the existing buildings. Also, the life expectency of a building is about 40 years in Taiwan, so giving higher energy efficiency stardards to new constructions cannot help much in the short term. The success of decarbonization of this sector will rely heavily upon policies regarding existing residential and commercial buildings, which experts considered insufficient.

Other Related Issues

Divestment from Fossil Fuel

The government promised to reveal the total amount of public subsidy towards fossil fuel industries. It also promised to reveal the public investment portfolio in high carbon emission industries. These are essential steps that should eventually lead to a divestment movement, as seen in Ireland and New York. A nationalwide divestment movement might become more possible when the ongoing divestment movement at the campus of National Taiwan University gains concrete results and therefore demonstrates the feasibility of such strategy to others on the island.