Taiwan may spend more than NT$100 billion (US$3 billion) during the next three years to increase wind-power capacity 10-fold and cut coal and gas imports.
"Renewable energy can help us reduce dependence on overseas resources," Wang Yunn-ming (王運銘), deputy director general of the energy bureau, said in an interview.
Wind may help curb use of coal and natural gas, which currently each fuel about a third of Taiwan's power generators. The target of constructing turbines with a capacity of 2,159 megawatts compared with 217.2 megawatts now may prove over-ambitious, an economist at the Academia Sinica, Liang Chi-yuan (梁啟源), said.
"There's a big question mark over whether Taiwan can build so many wind turbines," Liang said. "The best sites are already taken."
Generating electricity from wind costs about NT$1.7 for each kilowatt-hour, compared with the average of NT$1.3 in Taiwan, Wang said. State-run utility Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) pays wind turbine operators NT$2 per kilowatt-hour, he said. The nation imports all its coal and more than 90 percent of its gas needs.
"Wind power technology is the most mature among renewables, and its costs are close to those of traditional generation," he said.
The figure of more than NT$100 billion will include spending on Taiwan's first undersea electricity cables to transmit power from offshore sites as far away as the Penghu archipelago, Wang said.
Offshore turbine capacity may total 360 megawatts by 2010, according to a report from the bureau, distributed at an industry conference on Wednesday. That may eventually rise to 1,200 megawatts, Wang said.
Wind farms may account for about 5 percent of Taiwan's total installed capacity by 2010, he said. That compares with 0.4 percent as of July, according to Taipower's Web site.
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