The wind power industry in Taiwan faces challenges as international developers and investors voice concerns over supply chain localization requirements.
Although wind power projects are a good opportunity for Taiwan to develop areas such as maritime engineering and the manufacture of wind turbines and submarine foundations, the installation is even more important, Wpd Taiwan Energy Co Ltd (達德能源) chairperson Wang Yuni (王雲怡) said in Taipei on Thursday.
“The hardware and machinery part is easy, but [wind turbine installation] vessels and well-trained crew members are hard to come by,” Wang said at the Global Offshore Wind Summit, Taiwan.
The vessels are required by the government to be registered as Taiwanese, and cannot be manufactured in China, a Wpd official told the Taipei Times by telephone.
“We therefore urge local partners to work with international companies to conform [to the rule] in time.” said the official, who asked to remain anonymous.
A certain ratio of crew members must also be Taiwanese.
“If this condition could not be upheld, we would have to provide solutions such as offering internships to students from maritime schools, who would not be able to work as efficiently or full-time,” the official said.
Wpd is developing a 640 megawatt (MW) wind farm off the coast of Yunlin County.
Danish energy company Orsted A/S was last week required to provide alternative solutions as it failed to meet localization requirements for submarine foundations and foundation piles.
Orsted president for Asia-Pacific Matthias Bausenwein said that “100 percent percent localization has not happened anywhere and will not happen anywhere.”
Global Wind Energy Council chief executive officer Ben Backwell also expressed concerns over the localization issue, but said that he appreciated the government for creating a market attractive to foreign developers and investors.
“We think that the wind industry tends to localize anyway, in most places you’ll get local manufacturing if the market’s big enough,” he told the Taipei Times.
“I think actually having very strict, imposed local content rules from the government is not always helpful, and it may not build the right kind of industry as the industry has to be competitive in order to get the international prices we’re seeing for the consumers,” Backwell said.
He said the experience of the UK wind power industry could serve a good example.
“Because the UK is such a big offshore market, we now have two big manufacturing complexes for wind turbines, we have big factories producing cables, towers, jackets, services … and that was done without local content rules,” Backwell said.
Backwell said that with better logistics and efficiencies, production would happen locally.
“If Taiwan does things in a very efficient way, Taiwan can also export to other countries, especially Japan and [South] Korea,” he said. “We think the government should take a flexible approach on this.”
Tom Harries, head of offshore wind energy research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said that wind power is a people’s business and not just about technology.
“You need skilled technicians, engineers, people to build these projects,” Harries told the Taipei Times. “Initially you might bring over some experience and some labor, but ideally you’d want this to be domestic, because there are language barriers, cultural barriers.”
The main difficulty of a skilled workforce is attracting talent, which requires a lot of marketing and education from the developers on the supply chain to provide people with incentives to partake in the industry.
For developers and investors, the least amount of localization the better, as they could build a global supply chain at the lowest costs, Harries said.
“Taiwan is an interesting dilemma where it has already started with localization … so for a lot of the supply chain you’d need that to continue,” Harries said, adding that there could be financial concerns for the local companies already involved if the local content requirement was removed.
In Taiwan, the debate is between the higher prices paid for local content versus the industry’s global competitiveness, he said.
Taiwan is 98 percent dependent on imported fuels to meet its energy demand.
As of the end of 2017, renewable energy accounted for 4.6 percent of total electricity generation, while 85.9 percent was generated by thermal power and 8.3 percent by nuclear power, Bureau of Energy Acting Director-General Lee Chun-Li (李君禮) said.
Onshore and offshore wind power generated 14 percent of electricity from renewable sources, the bureau’s data showed.
The government aims to have renewable sources comprise 20 percent of the nation’s energy makeup by 2025, with offshore wind power generating electricity of 20.7 terawatt hours (Twh) of electricity, or one-third of the 60.2 TWh renewable electricity supply, Lee said.
Offshore wind power capacity is set to increase to 5,738MW by 2025 from 8MW in 2017, the bureau said.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
FACTORY SHIFT: While Taiwan produces most of the world’s AI servers, firms are under pressure to move manufacturing amid geopolitical tensions Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) started building artificial intelligence (AI) servers in India’s south, the latest boon for the rapidly growing country’s push to become a high-tech powerhouse. The company yesterday said it has started making the large, powerful computers in Pondicherry, southeastern India, moving beyond products such as laptops and smartphones. The Chinese company would also build out its facilities in the Bangalore region, including a research lab with a focus on AI. Lenovo’s plans mark another win for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who tries to attract more technology investment into the country. While India’s tense relationship with China has suffered setbacks