Taiwan’s renewable energy push is a combination of ambition, delays, and dependence

Taiwan’s renewable energy sector has shifted from aspirational policy to industrial necessity over the past decade, driven in large part by ambitious, some say unachievable, climate goals, increased semiconductor demand and the nation’s ever problematic dependence on imported fuel. Since the election of now former president Tsai Ing-wen in 2016, Taipei has attempted one of Asia’s more ambitious energy transitions: the phasing out of nuclear power while at the same time sharply expanding its solar and in particular offshore wind footprints.

The results have been mixed and at time perplexing. Overall, Taiwan has built a sizeable renewables pipeline and has worked hard to establish itself as Asia’s leading offshore wind market outside China – not an easy task with the might of Japan and Korea in the neighbourhood. Yet repeated delays, cumbersome permitting rules and questionable and at times self-defeating local-content requirements have slowed deployment significantly. In turn this has left coal and LNG as still highly influential in the country’s power mix.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government originally targeted a 2025 electricity mix of 20% renewables, 50% LNG and 30% coal. That target has since quietly slipped, with officials now acknowledging that the 20% renewables goal will likely not be reached until after 2026. Even then – now – it is seen by some analysts as unrealistic.

The sun still shines

Solar has accounted for much of the progress in the Taiwanese renewables sector. This has seen Taiwan’s installed solar photovoltaic capacity rise sharply from negligible levels in the mid 2010s to more than 12GW of installed capacity by the end of 2023.

A year later capacity was reported at around 14.28GW and more recent projections indicate additions in 2025 lifted total capacity to roughly 15.4 GW by the end-2025, assuming continued annual growth of around 1–2 GW.

This is because the sector has benefited from feed-in tariffs (FITs), mandatory rooftop solar requirements on new buildings and the DPP government’s push to utilise reservoirs, numerous fish farms around the country and industrial rooftops for generation.

In doing so, the south and west of Taiwan have become the epicentre of development because of stronger irradiation levels and more readily available flatter land than is found in the more heavily populated north. Domestic electronics manufacturers of which Taiwan is home to many, have also helped support the build-out, both as investors and as large corporate buyers of green electricity. Most prominently in this regard, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the island’s largest power consumer and a globally recognised name in its sector, has signed long-term power purchase agreements (PPA) with offshore wind developers in an effort to secure renewable supplies for its fabs.

Yet solar expansion has increasingly collided with Taiwan’s geography and politics. Much of the island’s north and east is mountainous, while usable western land areas are more densely populated or protected for agricultural purposes. Environmental opposition to ground-mounted projects has also intensified in recent years, particularly around wetlands and fisheries regions. Amendments to land-use and environmental rules have in some cases tightened approval processes and in doing so have restricted solar installations in some areas.

Offshore options

As a result of the problems onshore, offshore wind was intended to compensate for at least some of these constraints. With Taiwan possessing some of Asia’s strongest offshore wind resources, particularly along the Taiwan Strait facing China, early policy support attracted numerous European developers including Ørsted, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Northland Power. Taipei also sought to create its own domestic supply chain by imposing local-content rules covering turbine components, vessels and engineering services.

That strategy succeeded at first in creating an industrial ecosystem, but also backfired in that it slowed execution. Developers have repeatedly complained about overly convoluted procurement rules, changing localisation requirements and lengthy approval procedures. At least two foreign professional in the wind sector who wished to remain anonymous have mentioned the need to offer ‘gifts’ at the local level in order to facilitate operations going ahead to AsiaElec. This has led to some foreign groups delaying projects or exiting bidding rounds altogether as costs rose. A 2024 editorial in the local Taipei Times described these issues as a major cause of offshore wind delays and cost overruns.

“Multiple phases of offshore wind projects have revealed cracks in government policy. A smooth ride would have meant Taiwan hitting Tsai’s 2016 target of getting 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by next year. Instead, byzantine and inflexible local procurement rules and limits on project sizes have led to cost overruns, delayed rollouts and prospective contractors leaving the market altogether” the local English language paper said.

Progress has therefore fallen short of the original political rhetoric. Estimates indicate that only a fraction of planned offshore projects between 2017 and 2022 were completed on schedule. The nation has nonetheless managed to establish operational offshore projects including Formosa 1 and several large-scale developments off Changhua county in west-central Taiwan, giving it one of the largest offshore wind fleets in Asia outside China.

The broader energy picture remains dominated by fossil fuels though. Coal still accounts for roughly one-third of all electricity generation on the main island of Taiwan, while LNG has become the central balancing fuel in the transition away from nuclear. This has seen Taiwan expand its LNG receiving terminals and import infrastructure under successive DPP administrations, in the process reflecting official assumptions that gas-fired generation is necessary to stabilise intermittent renewables.

That strategy, however, comes with its own obvious vulnerabilities as Taiwan imports nearly all of its energy and remains heavily exposed to disruptions in LNG shipping lanes.

Several major power outages across wide areas over recent years have only served to reinforce anxieties to this end with critics arguing quite rightly that the government prioritised ideology in a bid to win votes in a period of panic over nuclear power following the events at Japan’s Fukushima power plants to to the north, over system resilience by pursuing a rapid nuclear exit before renewable infrastructure was anywhere near ready.

Supporters of this move counter that the administration inherited an ageing and politically toxic nuclear fleet while successfully building a renewable industry almost from scratch – a weak argument at best given the power problems the country now faces.

For now, under the new president, Lai Ching-te, the overall direction remains unchanged and unclear in some regards vis-a-vis a potential return to nuclear power generation. Taipei continues to back offshore wind, solar and LNG while maintaining long-term net-zero targets. Yet mounting industrial electricity demand, particularly from its booming AI and semiconductor manufacturing sectors combine to mean the pressure to deliver reliable generation capacity is intensifying. Taiwan’s renewable transition has therefore moved beyond environmental policy and panic over what happened in Fukushima into the realm of a dire need for economic security and uninterrupted power supplies from reliable sources.