Rupert Hammond-Chambers On Taiwan: Taiwan’s Renewable Energy Goals Fall Victim to Domestic Political Fratricide

Editorial in the Taipei Times
Monday, January 26, 2026

When former president Tsai Ing-wen first took office in 2016, she set ambitious goals for remaking the energy mix in Taiwan. At the core of this effort was a significant expansion of the percentage of renewable energy generated to keep pace with growing domestic and global demands to reduce emissions. This effort met with broad bipartisan support as all three major parties placed expanding renewable energy at the center of their energy platforms. However, over the past several years partisanship has become a major headwind in realizing a set of energy goals that all three parties profess to want.

Tsai made good on a key campaign promise to phase out nuclear energy by 2025 through pushing for an energy transition that featured a rapid expansion of Taiwan’s renewable energy capacity. Power generation targets for 2025, set by the Executive Yuan in December 2017, were to increase renewable energy’s share of gross power generation from 5 percent to 20 percent; drop nuclear power to zero from 12 percent; reduce the share of coal-generated power to 30 percent from 45 percent; and increase LNG’s share to 50 percent from 32 percent.

The nuclear strategy conforms to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) long-held position against nuclear power, originating in the efforts of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and its role in the formation of the DPP, over safety and environmental concerns while seeking to reduce reliance on imported energy sources and shift to cleaner ones. Her successor, President William Lai Ching-te, vowed to continue the same energy policy direction with a “second energy transition” seeking to catalyze what was achieved from 2016 to 2024.

Nearly nine years after the energy transition policy shift began, the structural change to Taiwan’s power generation is clear. Based on the latest data from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, power generation shares by energy sources toward the end of 2025 are remarkably close to the policy targets set in 2017, with one glaring exception — renewable energy. Renewable energy, including hydro, solar, wind, waste-to-energy, and biomass, produced just over 12 percent of Taiwan’s electricity through November 2025, well off the 20 percent mark. Upon closer examination, one can see that solar installed capacity growth has slowed significantly in 2025, while installed capacity of waste-to-energy, which contributes about 1.2 percent of power generation, has been stagnant since 2023. In 2025 this prompted the Ministry of Economic Affairs to quietly reset the timeline for the 20 percent target to November 2026, a date which may see further outward revisions.

The Executive Yuan’s own Annual Report on National Sustainable Development pointed out some of the reasons for the slower-than-expected adoption of renewable energy: solar power was affected by local governments’ interpretation of regulations and residents’ concerns about the environmental impact on solar farm sites. And biomass and waste-to-energy facilities are stalled by stock feeds collection issues and system operation. What’s more worrisome is that renewable energy companies appear to have become prime targets for partisan rancor, creating significant uncertainties and unforeseen risks for investors in this sector. That is going to have a negative longer-term impact on public-private efforts to expand and modernize Taiwan’s power generation and grid.

Taiwan’s economy is partly driven by the partnership between domestic manufacturers and global technology giants such as AWS, Microsoft and Google. These global companies place significant demands on their Taiwanese suppliers to produce their sourced products with renewable energy. There are hard deadlines in future years when suppliers must reach 100 percent of production utilizing renewable, zero-emission sources. There is a finite amount of this energy in Taiwan, and an absence of supply will inhibit growth in these partnerships while adding costs as supply tightens and demand expands. The only viable solution is to speed up the supply of renewables to reduce the cost and ensure supply meets the demands of global partners.

There are several examples illustrating the growing headwinds to expanding renewable energy. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers last year alleged Kaohsiung’s lack of supervision resulted in solar vendors causing damage to hillside areas. The reaction to this situation and other solar-related ecosystem impact complaints caused a recent, November 2025, set of amendments to the Environmental Impact Assessment Act, the Act for the Development of Tourism and the Geology Act, jointly supported by both the opposition KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). They passed the Legislative Yuan resulting in significant increases in the environmental impact review burden for companies installing solar panels. These actions expanded the bureaucracy, adding time and cost.

Three previously approved waste-to-energy, or solid recovered fuel (SRF), companies in Taoyuan, including U.S.-invested Taiwan Cube, were forced to cease construction or simply withdraw in 2024, after local lawmakers and residents made pollution claims into an election issue. Such a flipflop of a major multi-governmental administrative decision (local and national) affecting large, long-term investments removed renewable energy capacity that could help to not only reduce burgeoning waste but also produce much-needed renewable electricity. The case also sets a negative precedent for Taiwan as an attractive location for foreign investment.

This latter point is important. The just completed tariff negotiations with the United States seek to place Taiwan as the strategic partner for the U.S. in the development of artificial intelligence technologies, a huge opportunity that could continue to turbo-charge Taiwan’s economy in the coming years; however, it will require power and an investment environment that is transparent and reliable. The situation in Taoyuan undermines future renewable energy production, the removal of waste, and the attractiveness of Taiwan as a market for global capital.

The closing of Taiwan’s nuclear power stations too is a lamentable development. Nuclear power produces zero emissions, is clean and reliable, and should be playing an important role in Taiwan’s ongoing energy transition. The recent loss of three plants has hurt both efforts to reduce emissions as well as Taiwan’s national security, given the absence of energy supply chains in comparison to those needed to power coal, oil and LNG plants. Nuclear power is a plus when we consider Chinese blockade and quarantine scenarios that disrupt incoming energy supplies. It is a modest but welcome development that one of the power plants may yet be restored through efforts by the KMT and that Lai continues to leave open the possibility of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) to power the island in the future. SMRs are attractive but some years away from a mature technology ready for island-wide utility. Politics has undermined an important power source that produces zero emissions.

Environmental protection is fundamentally important to the health and welfare of all countries and should be taken into consideration when assessing renewable energy projects. But the stark reality is that Taiwan is falling behind in its renewable energy goals. While the excesses of more radical environmental demands in Europe have dissipated due to concerns over high prices and the reliability of grids that are overly reliant on renewables, the need for a healthy mix of power sources, including renewables, remains a must.

Pursuing an ambitious renewable energy goal will require bipartisan vision, political will and reliability, and a set of policies that can attract global capital. That was a goal all three parties agreed was important for national advancement as recently as 2016. It’s time for all parties to stop using renewable energy projects for short-term political gain, otherwise the 20 percent renewable energy target could well remain elusive, endangering important national commitments to the Taiwanese and to the global community.

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2026/01/26/2003851206